More than half of Detroit public school students are considered chronically absent this school year from district schools.
The district’s chronic absenteeism numbers have dropped a few percentage points from pandemic levels last year, when 59% of Detroit students were chronically absent. But 57% of students are still considered chronically absent, compared with 45% before the pandemic.
A student is considered chronically absent in Michigan if they miss 10% or more days of school.
“This continues to be, in my mind, our greatest challenge,” Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said during a Nov. 9 school board meeting.
Exacerbating the attendance issue, Vitti said, are rules for quarantining students who have been exposed to COVID-19. Students can quarantine for as few as seven days or as long as 10 days if they are identified as a close contact of someone who tests positive for COVID-19. Vitti said the district is working to reduce the number of quarantine days for asymptomatic students testing negative.
The slightly improved numbers this year were expected because the district has resumed in-person school after more than a year of conducting school virtually.
But the high rate of chronically absent students is notable for the district, which once held the highest rate of chronically absent students of all big districts in the country.
Nearly 58% of students were chronically absent in the 2013-2014 school year. Under new leadership, the district worked to get more students in their seats more often, reaching a 45% chronic absenteeism rate before the pandemic hit.
Chronic absenteeism is a complex problem for school districts. Students often don’t show up for reasons that aren’t willful: Some struggle with getting a ride to school. Other, older students may unexpectedly have to watch young siblings.
“Chronic absenteeism, for us, has not been a new challenge because it is directly linked to poverty,” Vitti told the Detroit Free Press in an interview in August. “The pandemic exacerbated what was already a challenging situation.”
Source: FreeP (USATODAY)
