Report finds Wake schools can do more to improve lagging student attendance

A new report says the Wake County Public School System can do more to boost student attendance, as more students are missing school in the county and nationwide.

School district officials intend to roll out some changes in approach over the next couple of months but are still in the planning stages.

Student attendance has plummeted in Wake and in school districts across the country since the Covid-19 pandemic, as schools move more learning materials online.

Statewide, about a quarter of students miss at least 10% of school days --- generally around 18 days. In Wake County, it's about one in five students. In both cases, that's far worse than before the pandemic.

Attendance has been a concern for school leaders nationwide worried about the potential impact of missing school on student performance.

Some schools are even taking families to court over truancy.

The Wake school district can do more to formalize expectations among teachers about how they can work to improve student attendance, the school district noted in a summary of the new report, conducted by Attendance Works. The district can also engage families year-round and make sure they know of any community resources they may need to help them with circumstances surrounding attendance issues. The district should not just focus on communicating truancy concerns to families, a district summary of the report notes.

"[Teachers] don't know what they're supposed to be saying to families," Michael Pesce, the district's director of social work, told the school board's student advisory committee Tuesday.

Attendance Works is a Connecticut-based organization that works with schools to improve attendance.

The Wake school system contracted with Attendance Works to assess how it tackles the problem and can use the organization again to come up with a plan to improve it, Pesce said.

The district plans to start an attendance task force in June. In July, the district plans to have some guidelines for intervention, and by August the district plans to have a "community messaging toolkit" to communicate the importance of attendance and resources for families who might struggle to get their children to school.

Families could struggle to get this kids to school for a number of reasons, district officials said, and it's important to get to the bottom of that if the district wants to improve those families' children's attendance.

It's important for parents to not feel blamed for every attendance issue, Board Member Christina Gordon said.

The report presented on Tuesday doesn't get into why children aren't getting to school.

Locally and nationally, people have contended with missed or late buses in recent years. Experts have also contended that many people simply place less value on going to school in person as more instructional materials are posted online, allowing some students to believe they won't miss anything by not going.