The pandemic is over, but Hampton Roads schools are still struggling to keep kids in class

One day , Judith Burkett of Portsmouth received a call from her grandson’s school: Did she know where Jakob was? He hadn’t attended in months.

Months before, the boy — his mother, her partner and three younger brothers — had been living with Burkett. But Burkett’s daughter and her partner had a drug problem and the family suddenly left in fall 2022, a couple of months into Jakob’s third grade year.

Burkett started asking friends and family to help look. She found out where they were living and alerted the school. The school attendance liaison became “a godsend.”

“She was like a pit bull until she got him back in school.”

Burkett received full custody of Jakob and his three brothers, who were still too young for school. But she worried about everything Jakob had missed: comparing fractions, decoding words, understanding story structure, learning multiplication skills.

Similar stories are playing out across the country, creating record rates of chronic absenteeism. In Hampton Roads, more than 40,000 students were chronically absent last year, meaning they missed 10% or more of the school year. That translates to about 18 days. Chronic absenteeism is not the same as truancy — even excused absences, including those because of illness and backed by a doctor’s note, are included in the count.

It is one of schools’ biggest challenges since the pandemic. In Hampton Roads, most divisions saw rates at least double, jumping from an average of 11% in 2018-19 to nearly 22% in 2021-22. The rate decreased slightly last year to 19%.

Chronic absenteeism has been linked to lower academic achievement, a higher likelihood of dropping out of high school and other poor outcomes later in life. If children aren’t at school, they can’t learn. Some research indicates the issue can also affect students who attend regularly — teachers have to go slower and review material more frequently to help the students who miss class.

State Superintendent of Instruction Lisa Coons said her department and school divisions have been communicating with parents about the importance of attendance — and the consequences of excessive absences.

“A lot of times we assume one or two or three days, it’s not that big of a deal,” Coons said in a recent interview.

But that’s a lot of missed content, including skills that build on each other. Just a few missed days are enough for a child to fall behind.

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Exploring the ‘why’

Experts say there are multiple factors to the spike, including the deteriorating mental health of some students and parents’ reluctance to send children to school when they have even minor symptoms of illness. Educators and researchers say there seems to be a decreased sense of importance of going to school every day, perhaps because of closures during the pandemic. Some families now take vacations during the school year instead of the summer or other school breaks.

Coons said it’s important to note that the reasons differ based on the type of division.

“Every school community has unique challenges and barriers,” she said.

For example, transportation may be a bigger challenge for rural families, whereas divisions serving more economically disadvantaged families might grapple with children missing school because of housing insecurity.

“The schools that are really working personally with families and talking with families and understanding what families need are having the most success at reengaging families,” Coons said.

The state formed a task force in the fall that includes educators and professionals, such as doctors. John Farrell, a doctor and member of the Virginia branch of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said though researchers have many theories, the assumptions are not yet backed by science.

One theory is that parents are still following pandemic guidelines. He said public health messaging succeeded in scaring parents into not wanting their children’s “snotty noses” to be the reason a teacher died from COVID — so they keep children home.

Guidelines have been relaxed with vaccines, herd immunity and other protective measures. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control dropped its recommendation that people isolate for five days after testing positive for COVID. Now the agency says 24 hours of being fever-free is enough. But communicating that to parents has been the challenge, Farrell said.

He said doctors also are seeing more children struggling with mental health issues. His office has had more requests to sign homebound waivers, which ask schools to provide at-home instruction for various reasons, including mental health struggles.

Portsmouth Public Schools Coordinator of Student Services Angela Flowers agrees that mental health problems are a leading cause of the absenteeism crisis. She’s seen an increase in requests for homebound instruction for that reason.

Portsmouth has had the highest chronic absenteeism rates in Hampton Roads for several years. After the pandemic, it hit 30%, nearly 15 percentage points up from 2018-19.

Flowers said her division — a high-poverty district — also has children miss school, for example, when older kids stay home to watch younger siblings or when students who got jobs during the pandemic kept them, even when work conflicts with school.

Other divisions also saw dramatic increases: Suffolk had one of the steepest climbs — 9.4% before the pandemic to 26.7% in 2021-22; rates dropped slightly last year to 20%. York County, which had the region’s lowest rate of 6.3% before the pandemic, climbed to 14.6% last year.

Chesapeake also saw its pre-pandemic low of 6.9% jump to 19.4% in 2021-22, before dropping to 13.2% last year. Yvette Lagares, the division’s enrollment and attendance coordinator, agrees with Farrell’s theory that much of the absenteeism can be tied to parents not wanting their sick children to infect others at school.

Parents are “playing it a little safer” than before the pandemic.

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Getting kids back to school

Burkett has nothing but praise for Portsmouth’s Waterview Elementary staff, who helped her grandson catch up with his peers after months of absences.

“I was terrified he wasn’t gonna pass,” she said.

Through one-on-one tutoring and other support, Jakob passed his tests and moved to the fourth grade, where Burkett said he is flourishing. Teachers continue to work with him this year as he’s missed several days because of illness.

Getting her grandson back in school involved multiple home visits by a school liaison, one of the school’s many tools.

Preliminary data indicate further improvement this year, Coons said. Most Hampton Roads divisions saw rates decrease from 2021-22 to 2022-23. Officials in several districts, including Hampton and Portsmouth, say they are on track for improved rates.

Schools are offering incentives, such as giving kids prizes when they reach certain attendance milestones. In Portsmouth, an elementary school threw a “glow party” for students with good or improving attendance. In Newport News, a traveling trophy created a friendly rivalry as schools compete for the month’s best attendance.

Schools are using automated wake-up calls to parents to make sure their children don’t miss the bus. They’re hosting family workshops to build relationships with parents and direct them to resources such as mental health services.

In a meeting with the state task force, Newport News Superintendent Michelle Mitchell reported that a few teachers asked parents to commit to making staying home as unappealing as possible — such as banning phones, video games and TV when their children don’t go to school.

The Virginia Department of Education also rolled out a new attendance recovery program in late January, which allows students to make up missed days by working with a teacher in person before, after school or on weekends. Elementary school students can recover up to 15 days with two hours in the program counting for one missed day. At the secondary level, every three hours count for one.

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Complaints of rigidity

Though divisions say they are tackling problems on a case-by-case basis, some parents say that hasn’t been their experience.

Newport News parent Jenai Huff doesn’t feel her daughter’s school has worked well with her. Her kindergartener has a documented medical condition and Huff was told the girl could still be held back because of the absences though she’s performing well academically. Huff postponed a medical procedure scheduled for this month so her daughter wouldn’t miss more school — she felt pressured to put attendance ahead of the girl’s health, she said.

A Newport News school spokesperson noted that chronic absenteeism is one of the school quality indicators that determines accreditation in Virginia.

“Regular school attendance is vital to student growth, development, and academic success,” said Michelle Price.

Price said the division launched a comprehensive attendance plan to identify and reduce barriers preventing students from attending school regularly. Part of the plan includes establishing a community Attendance Advisory Committee to “guide and inform the implementation” of strategies. Price added that the division has specialists who partner with families to connect them with community resources and service agencies to help them. The division also offers student counseling and school-based mental health therapy.

It comes down to making sure parents understand why their kids need to be in school each day.

Lagares, Chesapeake’s enrollment and attendance coordinator, said schools need to shift society’s mindset back to where it was before the pandemic:

“School is essential.”

Nour Habib, nour.habib@virginiamedia.com