New Haven Administration Tackles Absenteeism in Schools

It's not every day New Haven's superintendent of schools drops by your home, but for Yarida Collazo it's an opportunity to talk about her son, Alexander, as he heads into the ninth grade.

"He is very excited about the science program and engineering (at Metropolitan Business Academy)," said Collazo.

The visit to Collazo's home the day before the school year begins was also about attendance. Last year Alexander missed 16 days of school. That's just two days short of what's considered chronic absenteeism. His mom said it had a lot to do with health issues in the family.

"Part of the question is what are the things we can do to help make sure that high school and 9th grade, that his attendance is as strong as possible," said New Haven Superintendent of Schools Garth Harries.

It's an initiative that began this summer. The hands-on approach has dropout prevention specialists hitting the streets and going to the homes of 338 incoming high school freshman with a history of missing school. They try to find out why it's happening and what they can do to fix it because poor attendance can hurt a child's future.

"When students are not coming regularly, the chances of them dropping out of school is very high," said Gemma Joseph-Lumpkin, District Chief of Youth, Family, and Community Engagement for New Haven Public Schools.

"We want to make sure with that track record of disengagement, of being chronically absent, that we try to literally nip it in the bud, reach out to those families, reach out to those students, try to understand what we need to do to engage them, what we need to do to communicate with them and understand what the issues are but most importantly provide attendance education to them."

New Haven's school district already focuses on kindergarteners to try and make sure they learn good attendance habits.

"We've seen great success with our emphasis on kindergarten," said Harries.

Joseph-Lumpkin and Harries said this new effort to focus on 9th graders is extremely important because it's a vulnerable year for students.

"The whole idea of starting strong is powerful. We've been working on the kindergarten families. We really wanted to double down on high school this year, recognizing that how students start their high school experience is going to govern how successful they are," said Harries.

School officials said the leading reasons parents said students miss school is health issues and transportation problems. Dropout prevention specialists are assigned to certain students and work with them to solve any issues. They will also work with them throughout the school year to try and make sure it’s a successful one.

Superintendent Harries said they're making progress. In the last year he said they've cut down chronic absenteeism across the district from 25 percent to 19 percent. He hopes their latest campaign can do even more.

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