School attendance is improving in Ludlow Independent Schools two years post-pandemic, superintendent Mike Borchers tells LINK nky. The river city district’s average attendance rate now hovers between 94 and 95%, he said this week.
But progress hasn’t been easy.
Like many districts in Kentucky, Ludlow – a small district of approximately 780 kids – struggled with chronic absenteeism during the 2022-23 post-COVID school year.
To be considered chronically absent, a student must be absent from school at least 10% of the time. That means 15 to 17 excused or unexcused absences per student during the school year. The rate of chronic absenteeism in Ludlow for the 2022-23 school year was 22.63%, according to state education department data.
Ludlow’s chronic absenteeism rate was better than some river city districts and pretty much on par with others. Bellevue (23.79%) and Erlanger-Elsmere (23.39%) had similar rates. Slightly higher rates were found in Covington (26.54%), Dayton (32.1%) and Newport (25.8%).
Northern Kentucky school districts outside of the river cities that struggled with high rates of chronic absenteeism during the 2022-23 school year, according to state data, were Southgate (22.86%) and Campbell County Schools (20.52%).
And NKY isn’t alone.
Three out of four or 75% of Kentucky schools reported rates of chronic absenteeism ranging between 20 to 30% that school year, according to the state department of education’s division of student services. That equates to 29.8% (or one in three) of Kentucky students.
Not that the COVID era is entirely to blame. Chronic absenteeism was a problem before the pandemic, although not as pronounced. State data shows that the state rate for chronic absenteeism between 17 and 18% in both school years prior to learning moving online in 2020.
But Borchers said COVID did have a “big effect.”
“I think COVID had a very big effect on attendance,” he told LINK nky. “For two years we were telling people ‘if you have a fever stay home, if you have a cough stay home.’ And they kind of got into that mode. Kids were doing remote work. And we have families, now they work remotely. So that’s a big change in our society.”
Absenteeism can also be more systemic. Borchers said Ludlow has wraparound support – student counseling services, a family resource center, a food bank, health services and more – to help students and their families navigate tough times.
“Sometimes school does take a second seat. Not that it’s right by any stretch. So when we see kids are starting to miss, we try to connect them to the right services that will help get them back on track. We have people who will call people in the morning and make sure they’re up and at ‘em. So we work really hard on that,” said Borchers. “We’re trying to make sure we get kids here every day.”
Missing as little as two days of school a month can impact learning based on current research, state education department student success division team member Christina Watford said at a meeting of the Commissioner’s Student Advisory Council in March.
Watford works with the state Persistence to Graduation program – an initiative geared toward dropout prevention and college/career readiness.
“Two days a month may not seem like a lot, but if you’re looking at a school year spanning from August to May , the cumulative total of missed days would be 20 days,” said Watford. That equates to 20 days of lost instruction in what she called “foundational skills” like reading, math, writing and social skills for elementary students.
For middle and high school students, Watford said 20 days of missed school equates to between 100 and 160 missed class periods.
“That is a lot of missed instruction. So for all students, regardless of grade level, when we’re missing instruction, a lot of times that instruction either can’t be made up or if it can be made up, it creates another wrinkle … because in addition to all of that missed work they are trying to get caught up on, they also now have to figure out how they are going to do that,” she said.
Chronic absenteeism is not the same thing as truancy. Chronic absenteeism is focused on all absences – excused and unexcused. Truancy is defined in state law as three or more unexcused absences or tardies. State courts are often involved in truancy cases. FAIR teams (Family Accountability, Intervention and Response Teams) are used throughout the state to work with the courts to keep juveniles struggling with truancy and other issues out of the former court system and get them the help they need.
“We’re not going to incarcerate students for missing school, but there has to be some kind of deterrent that will also get people going a little more,” Borchers told LINK.
Educate NKY – an education incubator launched last year by the OneNKY Alliance with an initial focus on underserved and underperforming districts – is part of the chronic absenteeism discussion. Former Kenton County Schools superintendent and entrepreneur Tim Hanner is president and CEO of Educate NKY. He told LINK that chronic absenteeism goes beyond Kentucky.
“It’s a national crisis. This isn’t a Kentucky thing. It’s not a Northern Kentucky thing,” he said. According to Hanner, the increase in chronic absenteeism post-COVID is an “unintended consequence” of guidelines that no longer apply.
“If a child had a headache or was experiencing symptoms of a, b and c, parents were told to keep their kids home,” said Hanner. That became “a new normal,” he told LINK.
“People say ‘Oh, it’s because we kept them home for so long.’ No, it was when we came back to school parents were nervous, more parents had made arrangements for kids to be home.. It’s only recently that schools have begun to push back hard on this.”
The latest chronic absenteeism data will be available sometime after the end of the current 2023-24 school year. School officials are currently advised by the state education department to focus for now on “strategies for support” that include the following:
Know your data. “Track students who miss school time for any reason. Early identification of students and trends in absenteeism (e.g., time of year) will help with home communications and specific interventions.”
Communicate with home. “Write or call families/ caregivers as early as possible with student-specific attendance data to raise awareness. Help with action plans to overcome barriers.”
Identify root causes. “Assess prevalent reasons for absences. Create positive home and community partnerships to build support systems health, transportation, school climate, etc.”