Lindsey Rinder, Belmont High School’s director of English Language Education, often witnesses the snowballing effects of students missing school.
She recalled one of her students struggling to readjust to school routines after a multi-day absence. The student became noticeably emotionally dysregulated in class before enacting disruptive and even unsafe behaviors. Several staff members were needed to intervene and assist the student in regulating their emotions.
“That’s really painful to watch, and it’s predictable,” said Rinder.
It’s part of what inspired her to join the district’s working group, which began meeting this year to improve student attendance.
Chronic absenteeism—missing at least 10% of the school year—is also correlated with decreases in student achievement, including lower scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS).
In Belmont, chronic absenteeism is on the rise. In fact, the district’s chronic absenteeism rates have tripled since 2019, according to a presentation by Assistant Superintendent Lucia Sullivan.
Absences not only impact individual students but also have a negative impact on peers and teachers, according to Rinder. Peers miss out on opportunities for engagement and collaboration with absent students. At the same time, teachers are tasked with additional work to support their students with catching up on missed lessons and addressing behavior issues as they arise.
An Upward Trend
The hike in Belmont’s numbers echoes a statewide increase; across Massachusetts, 19.7% of students were chronically absent during the 2023-2024 school year, compared to 12.9% during the pre-pandemic 2018-2019 school year.
Attendance data revealed that during the 2023-2024 school year, 10.9% of all Belmont students were considered chronically absent, missing the equivalent of approximately two days per month, and 15% of Belmont High School students were absent for 18 days or more.
In her presentation, Sullivan said there are four reasons for chronic absenteeism: physical challenges, including health problems, transportation issues, and family responsibilities; misconceptions about the importance of school attendance and the differences in excused and unexcused absences; student disengagement linked to boredom, lack of connection to school, or perceived irrelevance of school; and student aversion to school stemming from bullying, anxiety, or academic and social challenges.
The four categories can also be linked, Rinder added; for example, absenteeism due to a physical illness could relate to a student’s avoidance of class later on, as the student feels unable to catch up on their coursework.
According to data from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), low-income students in Belmont had a chronic absenteeism rate of 26.6% during the 2023-2024 school year, while students with disabilities had a chronic absenteeism rate of 19.8%.
When analyzed by racial group, Belmont’s 2023-2024 attendance data also mirrors statewide trends; Hispanic or Latino students had the highest rates of chronic absenteeism (24.1%), followed by Black students (23.2%), white students (10%), and Asian students (7.5%).
Sullivan said the data is helping the district to formulate questions regarding how to support different student populations.
“The question is, what are those students experiencing or not experiencing at school that is causing them not to come as frequently?” she said.
Improving Attendance
The district’s working group is taking a multifaceted approach to addressing chronic absenteeism.
To meet some of the physical barriers families may face, the district implemented a new transportation policy; whereas the previous policy provided transportation services to elementary school students living more than a mile from school, the new policy allows elementary school students living in housing authority communities to receive transportation services, even if they are within the mile radius.
Rinder said the district has also seen improvements in student attendance since offering a free breakfast.
To improve collaborations with families, the district is piloting a new communication system called “Talking Points.”
Talking Points enables educators to send text message alerts to families and is capable of translating messages into 150 languages.
“Talking Points is designed to be universally accessible,” Rinder said, adding she has heard administrators are already receiving more messages through the new system than they had through former email communications.
The district leadership team decided to launch the use of Talking Points after surveys showed that email communications from teachers were largely not reaching families from historically underserved populations.
In addition to Talking Points, the district leadership team also kickstarted an attendance campaign to address misconceptions about attendance.
The campaign initiatives included sending a letter to families at the start of the school year about the importance of attendance and distributing calendars that families can use to track student absences.
According to Sullivan, student disengagement and aversion to school are more difficult sources of chronic absenteeism to tackle, as they are often linked to students’ inner lives and can be early manifestations of mental health challenges. These cases require more in-person support from staff and collaboration with families.
“Our hope is that we can make these improvements globally and the attendance campaign is helpful, our attempts to respond to the technical challenges are helpful, and that we can really unravel some of the more challenging issues,” Sullivan said.
Living Out the Questions
The district is currently “living in the implementation phase,” according to Sullivan.
The next steps will be to see if attendance data improves in the coming months, after rolling out these initiatives.
By Oct. 1, students will receive a letter if they have been absent for more than five days, and the district leadership team will calculate student attendance rates for the first month of school.
In conjunction with attendance, the district is looking into improving students’ sense of belonging. According to Sullivan, an important component to belonging and attendance is a student’s sense that they are contributing to the learning community.
“Our ideal is that [for] a kid who’s sort of feeling not into going to school today, before that kid even starts to ask mom if she can stay home, the kid’s gonna say, ‘Oh, so and so’s gonna miss me so much, you know, I really need to get there … [and] my teacher is going to miss me,’” she said.
Sullivan said once students are put on a positive trajectory, she believes that trajectory will also be self-reinforcing.
“The belonging, then, becomes a really strong piece,” she added.
