In the Hanover Area School District, attendance officer Jennifer Guesto struggles to keep up with reaching out to parents, investigating absences and tracking down excuses. She can make as many as 20 calls a day to elementary school families in the Luzerne County district.
Across the region, the phones keep ringing and desks sit empty more than four years since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
When students continue to miss school and working with families doesn’t improve attendance, schools can take parents to court. The number of cases referred to magisterial district judges has risen sharply compared to pre-pandemic data.
By next month, Lackawanna County officials estimate they will have conducted 400 hearings this school year. During the 2018-19 school year, the last before the pandemic closed schools and created long-term impact in classrooms, the county held 173 hearings.
In Luzerne County, the number of truancy cases referred to court has increased from 486 in 2018-19, to 926 in 2022-23.
The rise in absences post-pandemic is mirrored in classrooms throughout Northeast and Central Pennsylvania and across the country. Nationwide, chronic absenteeism – the percentage of students missing at least 10% of a school year – grew from 15% in 2018 to 28% in 2022, according to a study from the American Enterprise Institute.
As the school year concludes, many educators already have plans to boost attendance for the fall. Studies show that students who attend school regularly are better engaged in the classroom and achieve at higher levels than those who are chronically absent.
“For close to two years, we encouraged students and their parents to keep kids at home if they weren't feeling well, or the schools were just closed,” said Paul Dougherty, superintendent of the Tunkhannock Area School District in Wyoming County. “So that created a sense of not necessarily coming to school every day. So it was a problem that we kind of helped create. And we're going to have to work hard to get buyback back in and show the importance of being in school every day.”
Truancy and court
State law requires children to attend school. A child is deemed "truant" if he or she has incurred three or more school days of unexcused absences during the current school year. Habitual truancy happens when the child has six or more unexcused absences.
Once a child is truant, schools offer attendance improvement conferences to identify obstacles and offer solutions. If truancy continues, schools can seek court intervention.
That’s often not the answer to the problem, said Barbara Burge, Lackawanna County juvenile probation officer for truancy. While chronic truancy could potentially lead to fines or jail time for parents or guardians, the court system tries to help families first, she said.
Up until this year, the county had school liaisons who worked with families, but those employees’ roles shifted with the staffing shortages at the county’s Office of Youth and Family Services.
The 400 hearings expected to be held this school year in Lackawanna County include just as many meetings with families, connections to resources and offers of support.
State guidance suggests that punitive measures, such as fines or jail time, only be used when less harsh measures are unsuccessful. Cases in Lackawanna County could also rise to the Common Pleas level. It’s been several years since a parent served jail time for truancy, Burge said.
“I think everyone is struggling across the board, you know, and trying to figure out how to get kids back in … rather than going to court,” Burge said. “It's best if the schools implement some programs in their buildings to give them some incentive to come in. That works much better, but it's a matter of having the time and the people to put into a program like that.”
Looking to the stars
The lights dimmed and the lesson started in the planetarium at Pottsville Area High School. Teacher Adrian Portland flies the students to Saturn. Then they leave the solar system.
Educators, including Sarah Yoder, superintendent of the Schuylkill County district, hope that engaging programs make students want to come to school daily. Attendance in Pottsville schools has grown about 5 percentage points since last year.
“We have been very successful from last year to this year. Each of our three schools have had improved attendance and we're thrilled about that,” Yoder said. “We do attribute it to a lot of the variety of programs that we offer in the STEM and the sciences area, including the planetarium that we have here in the high school.”
Pottsville is one of five high schools in the state with a planetarium and an observatory, Yoder said. Up until this year, frequent breakdowns requiring hard-to-find parts meant students had to learn from a textbook instead of seeing the universe projected on the dome above. Using part of its federal COVID-19 funding allocation, the district spent $675,740 to replace some of the original, 1967 equipment. Portland teaches astronomy in the planetarium all morning and invites the public for evening sessions monthly.
Making connections, changing policy
In Tunkhannock, staff works on making students feel connected to school, Dougherty said. For example, students play competitive video games on the district’s esports team, which has helped make connections.
“So if that's a reason why somebody wants to come to school every day, that's a great reason,” he said. “Now they're back.”
At Hanover Area, the daily attendance percentage was in the high-80s pre-pandemic. That number is now in the low 80s.
The district created a policy this year to increase daily attendance. If students want to participate in any extracurricular activity, including sports, clubs or attending a school dance, they have to be in school at least 90% of the time.
Hanover saw some positive results from the policy, particularly from student-athletes, Superintendent Nathan Barrett said.
Students with perfect attendance and those who have made significant improvements are recognized monthly, and a new mentoring program will launch this fall.
Ten rising seniors will receive training this summer and will then mentor 20 elementary students who frequently miss school. The district hopes that those elementary school students will become leaders in their classrooms.
Barrett hopes to increase attendance rates and decrease the number of times the district must take families to court. The district’s two attendance/outreach officers spend the day contacting families and trying to connect them with resources.
He hopes the efforts work.
“Unfortunately, we have seen routinely, the same families over and over again, in our truancy court,” Barrett said. “Those two outreach officers, they are smoked at this point. They have done the same routine over and over and over again, with very little success and change. It's discouraging.”
