A holistic approach to absenteeism in schools
May 5—Social worker Jillian Record called a student into her office at Manchester's Parkside Middle School one afternoon last month — not because he was in trouble, but so he could pick up a package of beef jerky she had been saving for him.
Ensuring students at the West Side school have their favorite snacks is one way Record shows them that their school cares about them as they settle fitfully back in.
Although all New Hampshire schools returned to in-person, full-time learning just over a year ago, the transition has been rocky. Getting back into the swing of going to school every day has not been easy for everyone. Schools around the country have seen more students struggle with attendance than before the pandemic.
Students risk setbacks if they miss too much school, which could compound the "learning loss" many students experienced during the pandemic. So teachers, counselors and coaches have been working overtime over the past year to do what they can to keep kids coming to class, getting the rhythm of school back and continuing to learn.
"The more the country is getting back to a pre-pandemic normal, the more it allows kids to feel safe and comfortable," Record said. "To accept the structures, the formalities that were lost in that time."
Parkside Principal Steve Szuksta said the reasons students struggle with attendance vary from child to child, family to family.
"The pandemic had a really big impact on a lot of people in ways that are extremely different because families are extremely different dealing with loss and stress," he said.
During remote and hybrid learning, students fell out of the routine of coming to school and ran into lots of different roadblocks to coming back in person. Some students started working more or took on more responsibility for younger siblings. Some families lost their homes or their cars. Many students are dealing with stress and anxiety.
Basic needs
Record and Szuksta said schools have been taking particular care to reach out to students who have not come to school for a few days to figure out how they can help.
The answer is different in almost every case, but in many ways boils down to students having a solid relationship with someone at school — usually a teacher, but sometimes a counselor, a coach or aide — who can help overcome barriers to attendance and make sure children feel cared for at school.
"Most kids come to school because they have a strong connection with somebody, or they have in the past," Record said.
Those relationships didn't get the same chance to grow during remote learning, Szuksta said, so this year has been about strengthening those ties.
Szuksta is proud of the way his staff has stepped up in a challenging year. "I feel like my kids have really good people in their corner."
At Parkside, Record and the school's counselors have built up other infrastructure too. They set up a closet for students who don't have clean clothes or who need supplies, and Record often hands out snacks to children who missed school breakfast or just don't quite have enough to eat at home — any little thing to give a child a reason to come to school.
Record and the school counselors make multiple contacts with families of students struggling with attendance to try to figure out how they can help get students to school on time every day.
"We keep trying," she said.
But since COVID-19 swept across the state, many families are having an even harder time.
More help
From mental health support to the housing market that has apartments further out of reach for families just scraping by, Record said it's clear more people than ever need help. That has impacted children, too, she said, and often shows up in conversations with families about attendance.
"We have an influx of families that need support," Record said. "You see the stress on all the resources."
Szuksta said after the way schools and families found themselves more connected during remote learning, he has learned to think more about all the factors impacting a child's life.
For fifth- and sixth-graders, Record said, a lot of the conversations with families about attendance focus on making sure the family has a way to get the child to school, has before-school care if a parent's work hours make it hard to drop a child off, or even has an alarm clock for the child.
With older students, in seventh and eighth grade, the focus is less on the family and more on helping the child form healthy habits and underlining how important on-time attendance will be in high school.
Szuksta said that as the school year has gone on, attendance has gotten better. Part of that is less worry about a child bringing COVID-19 home to a vulnerable family member, he said. At the same time, routines and expectations of coming to school every day are getting more and more established.
Coming together
Rebuilding the wider school community with sports and clubs has also made school a little more comfortable again and given students a reason to come to class. Goffstown Athletic Director Justin Hufft said participating in sports has always been a way to nudge students to come to school and work hard.
"There was some leveraging of that, there always is," Hufft said. But since the disrupted pandemic seasons, he said, students understand better what life is like without sports. "They don't take it for granted now."
Manchester Athletic Director Christine Pariseau Telge said the district's middle schools have all seen record sports participation this spring.
She agreed that sports and clubs are an important piece of helping students feel connected to school, both to their teammates and their coaches who are important mentors. Rebuilding those relationships, she said, is helping students get back on track.
Sports, as they have always done, are also bonding the school community. Hufft said the gym was packed for the Goffstown boys basketball team's playoff run this year, and he said it felt like half the town trekked to watch the final at the University of New Hampshire.
Spring sports have been seeing more student fans than usual, Telge said. Even sports like boys tennis, not usually a crowd favorite, have become opportunities for friends to get together and cheer for their classmates.
It has been a difficult year, Szuksta said, but he's hopeful about the way things are going headed into the final weeks of school.
"Things are trending toward overcoming that 18-month disruption," he said.
