Licking County sees major increase in chronically absent students
NEWARK — Like much of Ohio, due mainly to the pandemic, Licking County schools are dealing with major increases in chronically absent students.
According to an article in the Columbus Dispatch, nearly 1 in 4 K-12 students in the state’s public school system missed 18 days or more of classes during the 2020-2021 academic year, or at least 10 percent of the year. Citing data from the Ohio Department of Education, one in 10 missed more than 20 percent, the Dispatch said.
The numbers were worse for the state’s most vulnerable children.
Thirty-seven percent of economically disadvantaged students, 33 percent of students with disabilities and 47 percent of Black students were chronically absent last year.
“I think absenteeism strikes at the core of receiving a quality education,” State Superintendent Stephanie Siddens said. “Poor attendance is related to lower grades, lower scores on tests, lower graduation rates.”
A lot of work to do
Jeff Gill, a former local pastor, is attendance officer for the Licking County Education Center for seven districts (not including Newark or Licking Heights) and also the attendance officer for Granville.
“Our challenge in Licking County is with 10 county districts, and more with overlaps into Licking County territory, we have a large variety of staffing and resource base issues to sort through,” Gill said. “A Johnstown solution isn’t a Licking Valley solution, and so on. But I travel with alarm clocks and gloves and warm boots in my trunk, and a long list of phone numbers and emails and contacts I use to find solutions for families in crisis.”
Gill noted that House Bill 410 established two levels of school absences, and tried to do some useful things, but has not been completely effective.
“The first level is chronic absenteeism, and I do wish they had allowed for some nuance in it,” he said. “Because everything counts, including if the student had to miss an excessive amount of time for major surgery and recovery. Letters are sent to families. The second level is unexcused absence, which involves habitual truancy and when we come knocking on doors. Habitual truancy is still a problem, but the numbers are about the same.”
Gill said Licking County continues to struggle with House Bill 410, because the law is relatively new, and terminology changed. “There’s a lot of work to do, to catch up with educational losses,” he said. “Everyone is bracing for lower test scores.”
He said chronic absenteeism numbers vary in districts, often because of household makeup, and COVID often skews the numbers. “Some have a lot of families with a mother, father, and two children,” Gill explained. “Other districts have five, six, seven or eight people living in homes that include grandparents. They may have three periods of absence in one semester, because of quarantines. So I’m not sure the numbers mean as much.”
Licking County numbers
According to the Ohio Department of Education database for chronic absenteeism during 2020-21, Newark City Schools increased from 15.1 percent to 31.6 percent districtwide, including 36.4 percent at the high school. Ben Franklin Elementary was at 42.2 percent and Cherry Valley at 41.7.
“The pandemic, we assume, is the core reason for the increase in chronic absences,” superintendent Dave Lewis said. “If a student is absent — even if it’s an ‘excused’ absence — for testing positive for COVID, or being quarantined from a close contact, that would count toward the overall 18 days. That 18 days could equal two days each month of the school year.”
One factor in the increased absences last year was due to starting the school year fully online for the first month, as well as quarantines throughout the year, Lewis added. “About 20 percent of our students remained online for the entire year. Early on, students were counted absent if they weren’t checking into the Zoom class sessions or completing assignments. This ultimately counted against our attendance percentages, and would have contributed to higher ‘chronic absence’ percentages. We expect this year to also be impacted by this, though hopefully not quite as much.”
One of the reasons Newark moved to one-to-one devices at the middle and high schools this year was to allow students to still stay connected with their classes even while at home sick or quarantined, Lewis noted. “We want to provide the tools for students to stay engaged as much as possible. We also have a variety of programs and outreaches to foster connections between students and a trusted adult at school,” he said.
Heath City Schools increased from 9 percent to 30.6 districtwide, including 47.1 percent at the high school. The middle school went from 7.8 percent to 36.1.
“Without looking at aggregate data, I can tell you that the number of COVID absences we have had for both COVID isolations (positive cases) and COVID quarantines has dramatically affected our attendance to the negative,” superintendent Trevor Thomas said. “With mandatory isolation and quarantine in a pandemic, there is simply no way to avoid having an increase in absences. We are continuing to intervene as best we can, but I’m certain when current attendance laws were created, there was no way for lawmakers to imagine the effect this pandemic would have.”
North Fork Local Schools went from 6.1 to 29.5 percent at the high school, and from 5.3 percent to 24.4 at the middle school.
“Until the change from the CDC and the Health Department concerning contact tracing and quarantining students, those that were close contacts were also put out of school,” superintendent Scott Hartley said. “With the new requirements, I foresee this going back to a more normal statistic. However, this also depends on any new variant that may hit us. All students who have missed are provided the opportunity to make up any work, most of which have done so.”
Licking Heights Local Schools increased from 9.5 percent to 24.1 percent at the high school and from 5.9 to 23.4 percent at the high school.
“We are aware that absenteeism increased over the past two years, which is a reality reflected in Ohio school districts. The pandemic has certainly been challenging for many, and we are aware of the resulting stressors on families,” superintendent Dr. Philip Wagner said. “We also had a 22 percent turnover in our student body during the last school year, a reflection of housing, food and other insecurities experienced by some families within our region.”
Southwest Licking Schools increased from 9.8 to 21.5 percent at the high school, and 8 percent to 16.4 at the middle school.
“Our chronic absentee data is reflective of the pandemic,” said superintendent Kasey Perkins. “We now offer online learning options, both hybrid and all day, to help accommodate students’ different learning styles. We are continuing to work with our truancy officer, our administration and guidance team, to set up meetings to help develop plans to keep students in school.”
Johnstown Local Schools went from 8.6 to 24.3 percent at the high school, and from 6.9 to 18.5 percent at the middle school.
“Indeed, the number of close contacts, quarantines, and COVID cases impacted our attendance rates in a negative way,” superintendent Dale Dickson said. “The good news is that we have an incredible staff of educational professionals that stepped up and provided instruction in a number of ways (live interactive remote instruction, sending work home, and in-class instruction), that resulted in our school district maintaining a quality continuum of instruction resulting in excellent academic scores despite the pandemic.”
Northridge Local Schools went from 7.1 to 20.2 percent at the high school, and 4.7 to 15.7 percent at the high school.
“Even though students were out of school sporadically due to individual circumstances, we did our best to provide distance learning for those students to complete online and/or along with their classmates at school,” superintendent Scott Schmidt said.
Lakewood Local Schools went from 12.6 percent to 43.7 percent at the high school, and from 8.4 to 30.3 percent at the middle school.
Ohio also has billions of federal COVID-19 relief dollars to spend on public schools, the Dispatch said.
Schools can use the money for wraparound services like counseling, expand their free breakfast and lunch programs, summer classes, tutors, online learning and more.
State lawmakers recently approved $7 million for a statewide contract with a company called Graduation Alliance that promised to engage with 75,000 chronically absent students and support 25,000 others.
“(Chronic absenteeism) is incredibly concerning,” Siddens said. “But I’m optimistic about the work schools are doing.”
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