Superintendent Jackie Glasheen shares Holyoke Public Schools attendance rates and her timeline for an entry plan during the Oct. 13 School Committee meeting.
Photo credit: Holyoke Media
HOLYOKE — Holyoke Public Schools Superintendent Jackie Glasheen, who has officially been in her new role for a little over three months, shared the district’s attendance rates and her schedule for creating her entry plan during the Oct. 13 School Committee meeting.
Glasheen first shared the district’s current attendance status. The presentation broke down each elementary school, middle school and high school’s attendance from the 2025-2026 school year. E.N. White Elementary School was the top performer among elementary schools, with a 93.3% daily attendance rate and only 17.9% chronic absenteeism. Holyoke High School Dean Campus was the best performer among secondary schools, with an 89.9% daily attendance rate and 34.8% chronic absenteeism.
Glasheen pointed out that Holyoke elementary school students are attending school more often based on the data than middle school and high schools.
Holyoke High School saw the highest chronic absenteeism rate at 51.2%, followed by Peck Middle School at 48.7% and Sullivan Middle School at 43.4%.
Looking at this current school year, the presentation broke down the attendance for each school but also categorized the attendance for those on IEPs, second language learners and the highest chronic absentee grade in each school.
Chief of Student and Family Experience Steven Moguel, who helped collect the data for the presentation, shared this information with schools so they could see their overall attendance and areas for improvement.
For example, second grade has the highest chronic absentee rate at E.N. White Elementary School. Each school has an attendance team, and Glasheen said schools and those teams can use this information to figure out what may be going on in that particular grade.
“It would make the school team say, ‘Huh, what’s going on in second grade? Are there a lot of sick kids, did something happen, was there a family with quadruplets that went for Disney World and all four of them were out for a week,’” Glasheen stated. “I say that jokingly, but that’s the reality. Four kinds can make a huge data difference, so it’s not always, ‘let’s support the problem.’ What is causing that, and is there support?”
Glasheen also stated that HPS has tiered supports for attendance which include tier one being for all students, tier two being for those who have five plus absences and tier three for those who are chronically absent.
The HPS superintendent also highlighted that Sullivan Middle School and Lawrence Elementary School have improved their attendance rate so far from last year to this year.
Glasheen said students are usually absent because of illness, lack of resources, school perception, transportation and weather.
Going forward, Glasheen said Moguel and his team are working on action steps to continue to improve attendance rates. Those steps include developing a district protocol around attendance entry, reviewing schools with best practices and identifying any shifts as expected practice, continuing to distribute tier one support to all staff, identifying success stories to share from a parent’s perspective and implementing transition orientation for those about to enter sixth and ninth grades so they know their new schools’ attendance expectations.
Glasheen also shared that as the new superintendent, she will launch her entry plan, a collaborative process to guide the district’s transition and set a shared vision for Holyoke’s next chapter.
Through a district-wide listening tour, Glasheen said she has and will continue to conduct school walkthroughs, get feedback from staff and families, meet community partners and engage students to find out what HPS is doing well and where they can improve.
She said the goal is to finish collecting the data by the end of the month, conduct data analysis in November, begin writing a data entry findings report in December and have a formal presentation for the School Committee in January.
From January through March, Glasheen said she and her leadership team will use the entry plan findings report to create a new strategic plan and present it in April.
She said the work will result in a clear summary of district strengths and needs, establishing foundational priorities for a co-created three to five year strategic plan.
