SPRINGFIELD — Chronic absenteeism has been a struggle for school departments nationwide over the past few years. The Springfield School Committee met on June 20 to approve policy changes designed to remove barriers to attending school.
“Chronically absent” is defined by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education as missed 10% of school days. A student who is not present for more than half of the school day is considered absent. With a 180-day school year, missing 18 days, or an average of two days per month, categorizes someone as chronically absent.
Chief of Family and Community Engagement Jose Escribano pointed out that Massachusetts was the first state in the country to mandate schooling in 1852 and it has been tracking attendance ever since.
The nationwide problem has several contributing factors. Escribano said DESE has acknowledged a post-coronavirus pandemic spike in absenteeism. During COVID-19, families were told to keep children with the illness at home for five days, and that lesson took root. Escribano said if a student is out for five days with COVID-19 and for another five with a communicable infection like RSV, “it adds up.”
School Committee member Peter Murphy said 7,000 students in Springfield Public Schools alone struggle with attendance issues. “DESE doesn’t distinguish between excused or unexcused” absences, Escribano explained.
“Nobody likes to be labeled something like ‘chronically absent,’” School Committee member Christopher Collins said. If a student has a documented health condition, he said DESE may label them chronically absent, but the School Department will “treat it differently.”
Of excusing absences, School Committee member Denise Hurst said, “It ultimately counts against us.” She asked Escribano to advocate with DESE around accountability for locally excused absences. “It doesn’t necessarily seem equitable and it’s not just Springfield,” she noted.
Despite this, Gresham said the policy changes are “in line with DESE’s current recommendations.”
Putting that issue aside, then-interim Superintendent Michelle Balch said the School Department’s attendance policy had been created in 2009 and was revised in 2011 and 2019. She said the department’s internal team had met to “ensure the policy was really reflective of the changes that needed to be made to be more responsive to the needs of students.”
Escribano said his team had worked with Baystate Health and the state’s Department of Families and Children to sculpt the policy revision. Through input from Bay State Health, they learned that requiring a doctor’s note after being absent is problematic. In an email to Reminder Publishing, Springfield Public Schools explained, “After much review, it was discovered that some doctors wouldn’t give doctor’s notes when asked, and others gave notes without even checking the child.
This made things unfair because some families could get their absences excused while others couldn’t. Also, state law doesn’t mandate that families need a doctor’s note when their child is sick. Instead, it allows simple notification to the school as sufficient.”
Escribano said the School Department is meeting with families of chronically absent students to identify other barriers to attendance and help address them.
For some students, one barrier might be traveling for sports. Hurst said “well over 100 kids” traveled for non-school-related sports last year. She noted that one school department in eastern Massachusetts changed their policy to be flexible with students who traveled to play on sports teams.
Discussing “buy-back” programs, in which students attend academic instruction for at least four hours outside of normal school hours to “buy back” the learning time they have missed, Escribano explained that after-school programs are not eligible. DESE considers the extra educational hours are considered part of the same day of education.
Mayor Domenic Sarno, who chairs the School Committee, asked if an exception could be made for vocational schools. He pointed out that Putnam Vocational Technical Academy had a successful after-school program. Escribano said he had advocated for it, but the students would not be given credit.
“I really think it’s about the effort that’s made,” Hurst said, commenting that DESE is putting up a barrier by requiring the buy-back must be done on a Saturday or vacation day.
The School Committee voted unanimously to approve the changes.
