Vermont schools are making headway to address chronic absenteeism, but rates remain stubbornly high

The Maple Run Unified School District in Franklin County has made some meaningful progress toward addressing chronic absenteeism, a persistent problem for school districts since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bill Kimball, the district’s superintendent, said he’s seen a 17% decrease in the number of students considered chronically absent through the first quarter of this school year compared to last year.

Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of the district’s students attend school 95% of the time — considered the target attendance rate under federal guidelines. Overall, about 22% of students in Kimball’s district are considered chronically absent.

In an interview, he said the district’s staff has made progress by finding at-risk students and directly engaging with them or their parents. “For us here at Maple Run, it’s really about engagement and belonging,” he said. “We know that if kids feel belonged and are engaged in their learning, they’re going to show up.”

Like Maple Run, other Vermont school districts have made progress bringing down rates of chronic absenteeism, according to preliminary data presented by Vermont Agency of Education officials during recent testimony to the House Education Committee.

School districts last year recorded their lowest rates since the 2021-22 school year, with 25% of the Vermont student body considered chronically absent last school year, according to the agency’s preliminary data.

But officials aren’t declaring success anytime soon. Vermont’s statewide rate is still above the roughly 18% of Vermont students who were considered chronically absent during the 2019-20 school year.

“We have seen a slow but somewhat steady decrease, but not nearly at a rate that is meaningful or is indicating to us that there is a solution in place right now,” Courtney O’Brien, the director of the agency’s safe and healthy schools division, said during testimony. “We are still seeing persistent challenges, and we don’t expect that to continue to decrease in a way that would be sustainable for student outcomes.”

Now, Agency of Education officials hope new policy changes in the works will help continue that downward trend — and reform state laws around truancy and absenteeism that have hardly changed since the 1960s.

“A lot of the language in the current statute, when you read it, very much reads like the 1950s and 60s, with truancy officers finding boys with black leather jackets roaming the streets and throwing them in cars,” Anne Bordonaro, the Agency of Education’s senior federal policy adviser, said. “That’s literally how it currently reads.”

At the hearing, agency members presented lawmakers on the House Education Committee with a rough outline of statutory changes that would overhaul how the state’s school districts and state and regional agencies handle student truancy and absenteeism.

The proposal would create a “prevention-focused, equity-centered strategy” that would reduce “ineffective punitive practices,” according to an Agency of Education memo.

By changing statute, agency officials hope to create consistent statewide definitions for both absenteeism and truancy. The Agency of Education would apply a model policy to all schools that receive public dollars under the legislation.

Currently, each county and school district has their own varying definitions of what constitutes an excused or unexcused absence, and how to handle cases when students are missing significant time.

“This is a long-term project. It is a multi-year initiative. We will need a lot of partnership from other state agencies and community entities, but we can do it,” O’Brien said during testimony last week. “This is a problem that we can find some very practical, somewhat immediate solutions for.”

Vermont’s rates of absenteeism spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, when districts struggled to manage both in-person and remote attendance.

During the 2021-22 school year, the percentage of students considered chronically absent hit a record-high 43%, according to state data.

Federal guidelines define a student as chronically absent if they miss 10% or more of the school year. That’s roughly 18 days, or two days a month.

Chronic absenteeism is linked to a host of negative outcomes later in a student’s life, Bordonaro said during testimony last week. Students living in poverty or who are experiencing homelessness are often the most impacted.

Truancy and absenteeism cases often lead to “an over-reliance on punitive tools when intervention is needed,” O’Brien said, such as legal fines to parents or the legal guardians of students who are considered truant — something officials hope to move away from under this new policy.

Agency officials cited several studies during testimony showing that students involved in the juvenile justice system had worsening attendance rates. Meanwhile, restorative justice-based intervention in places like Pittsburgh, Minnesota and Houston reduced suspension and absence rates.

Toren Ballard, the Agency of Education’s director of policy and communications, said the agency is finalizing legislative language with the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office.

Rep. Peter Conlon, D-Cornwall, the House Education Committee chair, said his committee will be reviewing the language in an upcoming meeting.

This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To learn more, visit vtdigger.org/community-news-sharing-project.