BETHLEHEM, Pa. - Some Lehigh Valley school districts are seeing an increase in chronic absenteeism and truancy following the COVID-19 pandemic. And what was already an issue before COVID appears to have reached a level of urgency in some schools.
“If the student is not here, the student is not learning,” said Rosa Carides-Hof, United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley's community schools coordinator.
- Lehigh Valley educators and community advocates say students are struggling to attend because of issues like mental illness
- Families are also struggling with housing and transportation
- Students frequently not showing up can end up in the court system
Carides-Hof works on student attendance at Donegan Elementary School in the Bethlehem Area School District. She said the school currently has a truancy rate of 41%, and nearly 22% of children there are “chronically absent.”
“What happens then is the student becomes more disconnected from school because a child that wasn't here for a specific math lesson or reading lesson is going to miss out. They come back and they are lost and if this happens on a regular basis, the child is going to fall behind.”
Chronically absent or truant?
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, a student is considered “habitually truant” if they have six or more unexcused absences in a school year. They’re “chronically absent” if they miss 10% of all school days – or about 18 days or more. That includes excused and unexcused absences.
The U.S. Department of Education reports that more than 10 million students nationally were chronically absent from school in the 2020-2021 school year. That’s up from more than eight million pre-pandemic. Some national education advocates argue the data quality suggests the 10 million figure is an undercount.
Local school districts report their attendance data to the state, but Pennsylvania has not made chronic absenteeism data publicly available for school districts for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years. The state does report regular attendance data at the school level online, which includes rates of chronic absenteeism.
Lehigh Valley numbers
The numbers at Donegan aren’t an outlier, based on data acquired by LehighValleyNews.com directly from Allentown, Bethlehem Area and Easton Area school districts.
In Allentown, 41% of students were chronically absent during the 2022-23 school year. A school district spokeswoman said those numbers include students who had left the district at some point during the school year but did not specify a number.
In Bethlehem, more than 27% of students, or 3,500, were “habitually truant” in the 2022-23 school year, according to former Superintendent Joe Roy. In the previous year, the number of “chronically absent” youth was 10% of the student population.
While the data is not an apples-to-apples match, Easton appeared to fare best of the three districts, with a chronic absenteeism rate across the district of 16%, or 1,347 students, for the 2022-2023 school year, according to Craig Reichl, director of student and community services. However, the middle school had a 24% rate, the highest of the elementary or high schools.
Bethlehem Area schools Superintendent Jack Silva was formerly the district’s chief academic officer. In an interview with LehighValleyNews.com earlier this year, he said the community schools, which are the highest-needs schools, are struggling with truancy and chronic absenteeism.
“The ‘green shoots’ of academic recovery that we had hoped to see have not materialized, as we continue to see worrisome signs about student achievement and well-being more than two years after most students returned for in-person learning."Peggy Carr, commissioner for the National Center for Education Statistics
“The community school model is one of the very best models we have, and they have a lot of different strategies within the community school model. One is reducing absence," he said. "The goal is [to] strive for five, you know, no more than five absences in a year…We're not hitting that five. We're trying. The community schools are doing all they can.”
A high-stakes issue
The U.S. Education Department links chronic absenteeism to lower academic performance, higher dropout rates and diminished success after high school. And recent data shows test scores in the past two years had large declines in reading and math scores for nine-year-olds and 13-year-olds across the country, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
“The ‘green shoots’ of academic recovery that we had hoped to see have not materialized, as we continue to see worrisome signs about student achievement and well-being more than two years after most students returned for in-person learning,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner for the National Center for Education Statistics, in a news release. “We are observing steep drops in achievement, troubling shifts in reading habits and other factors that affect achievement, and rising mental health challenges alongside alarming changes in school climate.”
Jacqueline Montti is a family development specialist with St. Luke’s University Health Network who works on student attendance with Carides-Hof at Donegan. Montti said the most at-risk students are the youngest.
“There is evidence that if there's chronic absenteeism in K to three, that it's unlikely that the student will be able to graduate school for any reason,” she said. “So it's very, very, very important that we focus on, you know, the most vulnerable, and in the elementary level, it's definitely K-3.”
Carides-Hof said the Bethlehem school year is divided into four quarters and if a student misses school four times during a quarter, the parent is contacted. The district sends a second letter after seven absences and the family is referred to a school attendance officer at 10 absences.
“Ultimately you might end up in court and having to pay a fine for that,” she said.
Mental health crisis
Judge Jennifer Sletvold of Northampton County Court said she created an attendance improvement program in 2016 because kids were slipping through the cracks. She said students would have in excess of 100 absences by the time they got to her courtroom.
“The problem is never going to not exist,” Sletvold said. “It was obviously very much a concern before COVID. No question about it, which is why we started our school attendance court in Northampton County. It warranted attention, it needed attention. COVID took an already stressed problem and already stressed system and put what I call cinder blocks on top of something that was barely being held there in the first place.”
“Mental health issues among the students are now the most prevalent problem that I see in school attendance court. And they're crushing. The mental health issues with these kids, it's just crushing them.”Northampton County Judge Jennifer Sletvold
Sletvold said the biggest issue she sees kids struggle with is mental health challenges.
“Mental health issues among the students are now the most prevalent problem that I see in school attendance court,” she said. “And they're crushing. The mental health issues with these kids, it's just crushing them.”
Sletvold said her school attendance improvement court is 100% voluntary. She said it’s designed to allow students and people with access to resources to sit around a table.
“We start with the students, we talk to the parents, and around the table are all kinds of resources and help for referrals to be made,” Sletvold said. “And those referrals can be made more quickly, depending on the need and we can get in there right away and start working with the families targeting their specific needs, once we identify them.”
Sletvold said they can make quick referrals to drug treatment, mental health care and family therapy and can come up with an individual school attendance plan for each student.
However, Sletvold’s school attendance improvement court only covers the Easton Area School District.
“We volunteer, I volunteer and our court volunteers my time and all of our services to the community,” the judge said. “And the court time that I spend is voluntary on my part and on the part of the court, so we would love to expand it, but our resources don't permit that right now.”
Legal consequences
Magisterial district judges have the authority to try to deter truancy under state law. Schools only have the right to cite children aged 15 years old or older for truancy and can ticket either the child or the parent, not both. A district must provide proof that it held a school attendance improvement conference first. Fines, which district judges have discretion to issue, are capped at $300 for a first offense under state law.
Lehigh County Court saw 1,298 youth for truancy in 2022, according to written responses from Stacey Witalec, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Courts. She said students are predominantly dealing with anxiety and other mental health issues, and transient home situations.
Witalec said the magisterial district judges generally handle the cases by determining the reason for the child’s truancy and putting resources into place. After that, the judge can dismiss the case, or order strict compliance with the attendance improvement plan. The judges can also order community service, fines and court costs.
Sletvold said a deficit of resources is compounding getting students the help they need.
“The other problem with COVID besides I would say just exacerbating mental health issues, it also has decimated resources,” she said. “So the need has never been greater and the resources have never been more lacking for mental health treatment. The resources that we had pre-COVID we are now encountering waitlists.”
Other challenges
Gina Nichols is the director of family stability with the United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley. She said families are also struggling with homelessness and a lack of transportation.
“The housing crisis is very real,” Nichols said. “I think for our community school coordinators, that's the biggest hurdle that they're hearing about. And because all the prices have increased on so many of our everyday essentials, families are sharing that they're working more jobs, they’re more stressed and this is all kind of just taking a toll on their family.”
Nichols said families moving to more rural areas in the Lehigh Valley to find cheaper rent will then sometimes have to contend with issues around employment and having reliable transportation.
The Allentown School District has several interventions it is able to utilize to get students re-engaged with schools. Those include letters to parents, phone calls, emails, home visits, attendance improvement plans and police citations.
Exploring solutions
Jill Pereira, vice president of education and impact for United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley, said school districts should focus on relationship-building rather than trying to use punitive measures to gain compliance.
“At the base of it is relationships and some of what we're starting to work on is parent mentoring,” she said. “We know that social connectedness among parents can be helpful to building that school community and a lot of our families right now are feeling isolated.”
At least one school in Allentown has seen success with that approach.
“Our big worry is that the child will at some point, leave school, won't finish and will not graduate from high school."Rosa Carides-Hof, United Way of the Lehigh Valley community schools coordinator at Donegal Elementary School
Rebecca Bodnar, principal at Central Elementary School, said chronic absenteeism at her school shot up to 69% in the 2021-22 school year. But last year, they were able to lower the rate to 46%. She credits the 23% drop to a team approach where members met weekly to determine the challenges facing at-risk students.
“We found that those students who struggled with being chronically absent in years past -- if we're able to connect them with either an adult in the building during the school day who they really trusted, felt safe going to, and, or partner that with getting them in an after school activity or program, they're more likely to come to school.”
Bodnar said being a walking district also contributes to across-the-board absenteeism.
“It would be phenomenal if the district was able to figure out a way to offer transportation to some of those families who are on the cusp of being a mile away, but not quite a mile away,” she said. “I think that that would be helpful to them just to have that as an alternative if it's not nice out if they're running late if they have other children to get ready. It’s just another way that we can support our families and get the students to school.”
Montti said she incentivizes Donegan students to show up for a class by giving out prizes to students on her caseload who master attendance challenges and offering breakfast treats for parents. She also holds an assembly each quarter and hands out certificates for good and perfect attendance.
Carides-Hof said she can connect families with services to help students make it to school every day to learn, whether it’s food, an afterschool program or counseling.
“Our big worry is that the child will at some point, leave school, won't finish and will not graduate from high school,” she said. “So we put all these resources and all these supports in the elementary school to make sure that the students have a routine and an understanding of the importance of attendance so that when they get to middle school they continue to go to school. And finally, we want to make sure that the students are not missing school and they are graduating.”
