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Houston's ISD superintendent, Mike Miles, believes that they should not have canceled school on January 16 because he feels that school employees should consider themselves as essential workers like hospitals, police, and firefighters.

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Hillsdale LSD in Ashland County village of Jeromesville have used all five snowdays allocated for the school year. They made the decision to have online learning for any days left in the school year that will be missed due to inclement weather.

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JEROMESVILLE, Ohio (WJW) - A number of local school districts are scrambling to come up with contingency plans after being forced to use all of their calamity days for the entire school year.

The storms that hit Northeast Ohio in recent weeks came with a mix of snow, heavy rain and ice and created hazardous driving conditions.

The stretch of bad weather prompted the Hillsdale Local School District in the Ashland County village of Jeromesville to use all five of its snow days.

"Obviously we think about kids walking down driveways and then young drivers driving and there's a lot to it and obviously keeping the buses safe so that we get kids here safely," said Hillsdale Superintendent Dr. Catherine Trevathan.

As a result of not having any calamity days left, Hillsdale Schools informed students and parents that the district will switch to online education whenever in-person learning is not possible because of unsafe weather conditions.

"We've got that plan in place so that instruction continues and the kids are getting what they need," said Dr. Trevathan.

The superintendent says teachers in the district learned a lot about online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and she is confident that the virtual model will work if it becomes necessary later in the school year.

The virtual model was tested last week, when the district switched to online classes as a result of the sixth snow day of the school year.

"The kids had rigorous assignments and they were working. They had a lot of good questions and so I think it was a good plan, but it's still best to be in the classroom and that's what we try to do," said Dr. Trevathan.

The superintendent says the district is aware that some parents are concerned about how virtual education can impact a child's learning and socialization, but she points out that online learning should only be needed in very limited circumstances for the rest of the school year.

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Local school district plans ahead after running out of snow days

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A number of local school districts are scrambling to come up with contingency plans after being forced to use all of their calamity days for the entire school year.

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Las Angeles USD has found a way to combat chronic absenteeism by incorporating competition. Students in Ms. Christales class are motivated to come to school so they can display the attendance trophy in their classroom for a month.

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Second-grade teacher Nelly Cristales says her LAUSD school has developed a unique way to combat chronic absenteeism - competition.

At 32nd Street School near University Park in East Los Angeles, a big, bright trophy goes to the class with the least absences and latenesses - and Cristales' students are eager to win.

"My kids are motivated, we want that trophy, and we want to keep it," said Christales, explaining the winning class gets to display the trophy in their classroom for a month. "They tell each other 'Don't be late, don't be late.' "

For Cristales, the nationwide problem of chronic absenteeism has hit home, with roughly three of her 22 students not attending class regularly, and the problem seeming to be getting worse. Last school year Cristales' class won the trophy twice - but this year they have not won it at all.

LA Unified schools saw a severe decline in students' attendance post-COVID-19, with 40% of students chronically absent in the 2021-22 school year - a 19.8% increase compared to before the pandemic, an LAUSD spokesperson said.

"Where do I start," said Cristales when asked what challenges chronic absenteeism creates for her.

"Each day is vital to the content being delivered to the students," she said. "Each day missed is a loss. As an educator [we do] not have the luxury to waste any time."

Cristales compared learning to climbing a mountain, with each day in the classroom a step towards reaching the top. Missing just a day of school can impact a student's learning, she said.

"You feel the obligation to help that student to catch up," she said, " [even] when you have other students to help...it is frustrating to me as a teacher because I know what the loss of the day means for those students."

Cristales' school also has a partnership with the University of Southern California, which provides tutors and mentors to students twice a week for 30 minutes.

"But if the student is not present, they are missing out on the support that they so much need," she noted.

LA Unified identify students as chronically absent if have they missed at least 10% of school days or about three and a half weeks of classes.

"We've seen a lot of difference [in my classroom] after COVID," said Cristales. "Many of them are not coming, and when you ask them why, many will tell you they woke up late, the traffic was bad...It's like their priorities have changed, and that's what I've observed."

Morgan Polikoff, associate professor of USC Rossier School of Education, said COVID has changed many students' and parents' behaviors toward school.

"Certainly, COVID has made people more sensitive to illness and more likely to keep kids home if they're not feeling well," Polikoff said. "There's also some evidence to suggest that kids are just less engaged in school than they were before."

Online classes also created an unintended consequence, creating the belief among families that it's not a big deal if kids miss school, Polikoff added.

A study conducted by Polikoff and his colleagues found there are clear demographic trends in the increases in absenteeism among Black and Hispanic students. These declines have been especially large for historically underserved student groups, with those students not recovering to pre-pandemic levels.

"What we know about the pandemic and its impact on students is that it just widened every gap," Polikoff said. "The way that our education systems and our society are set up is that all these disadvantages are sort of stacked on top of one another."

Polikoff said some factors that can lead Black and Hispanic students to have a higher absence rate are lower vaccination rates among the Black and Hispanic communities, which can lead to sickness or aversion to getting sick.

"There are a million reasons, but they all point in the same direction: Black and Hispanic students are subject to many different forms of cumulative disadvantage both within school and outside of school," Polikoff added. To combat higher absent rates, LAUSD has established the iAttend program aimed to improve student attendance and help prepare students to be "ready for the world" through accumulated data, community outreach, and improvement on staff education.
This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

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One Teacher's Struggle with Chronically Absent Students in Los Angeles

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40% of LAUSD's students missed more than three weeks of class in 2021, according to district officials: How one teaching is coping

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A former teacher turned independent journalist is exposing procurement processes amongst school districts and salesman that are based off relationships and not based on what is best for students.

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School procurement is broken. Education journalists can help fix it.

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School procurement is broken. Education journalists can help fix it. Now more than ever, coverage of district spending decisions makes a real difference for kids and educators, says a former industry insider. By Colette Coleman

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A nonprofit, Urban School Food Alliance (USFA) made up of 17 member school districts are trying to work with the USDA to come up with a way of improving the procurement process so that all students nationwide can get quality food in school cafeterias.

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The Urban School Food Alliance has teamed up with the USDA to improve the school nutrition procurement process. | Photo: Shutterstock

With over 40 years in school nutrition, Dr. Katie Wilson is no stranger to the procurement challenges school nutrition operators face on a daily basis.

As the Executive Director for the Urban School Food Alliance (USFA), a nonprofit made up of 17 member school districts that aims to procure high-quality food for schools, Wilson has approached the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to see if there were ways the USFA could lend a hand in improving the procurement process for operators throughout the country.

"We always said we have to fix this, but we have to really sit down and look at it from a broad, open perspective and stop using band aids and bubble gum," says Wilson. "In talking with USDA, I kept saying, 'look, there's got to be a better way to do this. I just need a chance to pilot some things. We want to make a difference.'"

Wilson and the team will be given a chance to help solve the school nutrition procurement puzzle through a new three-year partnership with the USDA that aims to simplify the procurement process for school nutrition operators and get good quality food into school kitchens.

Procurement miscommunication

Rules for school nutrition procurement vary widely depending on a district's location, making the procurement process hard to navigate.

"There's the federal regulations, there's the states' regulations that are all different, and then, the local districts can have different regulations as well," says Wilson. "And all of these things are not procurement rules that are good for food."

With so many different rules, it's easy for operators to misunderstand what the regulations are when it comes to the bid process, Wilson says. States and local districts also have their own rules which can vary from one another causing further confusion. One state, for example, requires operators to list all the USDA Foods on their bid and their price but not the item quantity.

"That's not a bid," says Wilson. "You have to know what the quantity is."

Another problem which school nutrition is "notorious for," Wilson says, is not treating a bid as a business deal. Some operators will accept a bid and then end up not buying that product.

"If you send out a bid and you accept a bid, you have to understand that that is a business partnership, and you should be required to buy what you bid," she says.

Untangling the procurement web

With so much miscommunication surrounding school nutrition procurement, the first phase of the partnership will be an investigative period where the USFA will analyze federal, state and local procurement rules. As they go through the current regulation, their goal is to identify any confusing language or other barriers to the procurement process. The results from the investigation will then be compiled into a report.

The investigative phase also includes a training component, where Wilson and her team will start to research what procurement resources are available to operators and how they can be improved upon.

One of the resources Wilson plans to offer through the partnership is a training program called Team Up that she helped develop when she was at the Institute of Child Nutrition.

Team Up is a peer-to-peer mentoring program that provides training on certain topics, including forecasting and writing bids. In the coming months, Team Up trainings will be held throughout the country, Wilson says, and each of the sessions will be highly interactive.

"[You're not going] to sit through an hour lecture," she says. "You're going to bring your numbers, you're going to sit down and you're going to work through it."

School nutrition operators will also have access to the USFA procurement toolkit and additional resources on the USFA website.

Wilson stresses that even though the USFA is made up of large, urban school districts, each of these tools and resources will be geared towards districts of all shapes and sizes, no matter how many meals they serve or where they're located.

"It's going to be about everybody," she says "We're just the convening group that's going to be working on this."

The USFA hopes to have the investigative phase wrapped up by next summer. From there, Wilson would like to work with PhD students at a business school to use the information they collected during the investigative phase to create a school procurement business plan.

"We're just looking for a university that's really interested in this and we want to work with the business school to help write what a good procurement business plan would look like," says Wilson.

At the end of the partnership, the business plan would then be submitted for discussion to the USDA and Congress to see how the rules and regulations surrounding school procurement could be updated to make the process easier for school nutrition professionals.

Feedback on the partnership has been positive so far, Wilson says, and she's hopeful that this will be the first step in improving what has been a messy and confusing process for operators.

"This really opens the door to allow practitioners to lead this change," she says.

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An inside look at the USDA and Urban School Food Alliance's procurement partnership

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Dr. Katie Wilson shares how the team's new partnership with the USDA will help schools tackle their biggest procurement pain points.

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Lawmakers in Oklahoma are trying to pass a bill to make students that are in private school or homeschool take standardized test. Child advocates are saying that this bill does not give parents a choice in their children's education.

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KOKH - February 2, 2024 6:30 am

State Rep. Judd Strom

An Oklahoma lawmaker is proposing a bill that would mandate standardized testing for private and homeschooled students.

It's an idea that's facing some backlash.

Child advocates like Tom Newell with yes. every kid. says this idea defeats the purpose of having school choice in Oklahoma.

State Rep. Judd Strom (R-Copan) is proposing House Bill 3585. It would require private and homeschool students to take standardized tests.

Newell says this idea threatens parental choice.

"What this bill does is it basically says, "Oh, we're going to give you alternatives, but they're all going to look the same," Newell said. "Here's three red apples, you can pick from one of those three. Well, that's not real choice. That's not real alternatives."

If lawmakers vote to approve the legislation, students would have to take their exams at a state-certified testing building.

Newell argues that would be counterproductive.

"What it means is whether it's a private school or homeschool, they're all going to have teach the same test. They're all going to have to look the same. If this bill were to pass, it would definitely interfere with parents being able to choose what's best for their children."

If the bill passes, students who don't take a mandated test would have to repay their tax credit to the state.

"We will do everything we can to convince the legislature that they're actually going back on their word last year. They said, 'Parents know what's best.' If they were to pass the bill and sign it into law, they would be saying, 'Only the state knows what's best."

Fox 25 reached out to State Rep. Strom, but our newsroom didn't hear back.

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Oklahoma bill aims to require standardized tests for private and homeschooled students

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Ponca City Now is your source for local area news, weather, sports, auctions, and more

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Emma Whitford tells Forbes Talks' that the surge in homeschooling came about because before and after the pandemic, parents wanted more control over what their children were learning and also social reason like bullying. Programs like the Educational Savings Account (ESA) have helped parents homeschooling with money to pay for things like online curriculum.

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What's Driving The Surge In Homeschooling?

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Emma Whitford, an education reporter for Forbes, joins 'Forbes Talks' to discuss the factors contributing to the surge in homeschooling.

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With the ESSER funds ending in September, school districts like Fort Worth school district are worried if programs that are showing academic growth like their Saturday school will have to be cut for the 24-25 school year.

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Fort Worth-area school districts face budget cuts as COVID relief funds expire

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Principal Katy Myers listened to the sounds of learning as she walked the hallways of Rufino Mendoza Elementary.

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In 18 months the ESSER funds will run out. Some districts may have to cut cost because they will not have a plan in place. Many school boards will make their decisions between January and May but unfortunately, the public doesn't show up. Without outside voices, decisions could impact a school district for many years.

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By Marguerite Roza
The next two years will be messy ones for district finances.

The biggest-ever one-time injection of federal cash (known as ESSER) has 18 months left. As that money runs out, a perfect storm of financial pressures will eclipse anything most districts have seen before. Our analysis suggests the gaps in 2024-25 will be worse than the last recession.

District financial teams can see it coming - it's right there in the budget forecasts - even though few are at the point where they're sharing out scenarios publicly.

In fact, most district leaders don't yet have a plan for how to navigate the financial headwinds. Those plans will start to take shape in the next few months - and come with big consequences for downstream financial solvency, teacher and staff layoffs, school closures, and ultimately for students.

A perfect storm of financial pressures will eclipse anything most districts have seen before.

Much of this planning goes down in a sleeper set of district meetings: budget workshops.

These seemingly routine work sessions are held a few times each year between January and May. While they're open to the public, they tend to get low attendance and little (if any) media attention.

But it's at these budget workshops, with very little fanfare, that a mix of board members and district leaders hammer out key decisions that can impact districts for years to come.

It's at these budget workshops that a mix of board members and district leaders hammer out key decisions.

For this spring's budget reporting, I suggest keeping an eye on these five critical issues:
#1. Are ESSER investments getting students back on track?
Before grappling with the forecast, every district should be tracking whether its ESSER investments are succeeding at addressing pandemic-era learning gaps.

Are math and reading scores coming back up? Is attendance improving? With only 18 months remaining on these funds, district leaders need to pivot now if their investments aren't delivering real value for students.

Calling attention to student outcomes alongside finance deliberations isn't typical, but it should be.

In some places like The 74, it's happening: St. Paul is tracking whether its investments are working and making changes where warranted.

Elsewhere, the LA Times' coverage of the high cost of the district's acceleration days ($611 a day per student) against the backdrop of learning setbacks gets at whether the money is delivering value for students.

An Associated Press analysis tracks down just how much is being spent on facilities. Money spent on facilities means those funds aren't available for learning supports. (Again, are students back on track?)

In-depth coverage by LA School Report and The 74 of Stockton's finances unearths numerous problematic spending decisions, some with potential fraud implications.

(In addition to district financials, some ESSER spending details are available on Edunomics Lab's ESSER Expenditure Dashboard or can be found in audit reports.)

Calling attention to student outcomes alongside finance deliberations isn't typical, but it should be.
#2. What's the magnitude of any forecasted budget gaps?
Simply put, budget gaps occur when expenses are greater than revenues.

When the ESSER tap abruptly goes dry, we estimate the average district will have to cut costs by some $1,200 per student in 2024-25. As the LA Times demonstrates, for some districts the outlook is much worse.

Typically, district financial planning documents outline a multi-year forecast. In Spokane, the district's planned expenditures exceed revenues by $12 million in 2023-24 and $62 million the following school year. Dividing that gap by the district's enrollment of 28,000 yields likely cuts of $2,200 per student.

One can assume that the easy spending cuts (e.g., eliminating contracted services) are already baked into the figures. When the forecast shows a deficit, it means that more active cutting is required. That's what happens when districts make recurring commitments that outpace the revenue stream, for instance when districts used ESSER funds to pay for new hires or grant permanent raises.

A few districts have played it safe, awarding only modest or one-time pay bumps and stashing funds away in reserves. Others made larger than typical inflation-era raises, with some guessing their state legislatures will fully cover the gap. Chalkbeat coverage of Detroit-area districts highlights the different decisions districts are making in preparing for the finances ahead.
Follow @thegrade_ for education news each morning and @alexanderrusso for media commentary and insight. #3. Are enrollment and staffing trends headed in the same direction?
Over time, enrollment drives revenues while staffing drives expenses. Nationally, enrollment is falling while staffing counts are climbing. Fewer students usually means a smaller staff, but many districts have used their relief funds to both hold on to existing employees and add more in the form of new counselors, reading specialists, nurses, etc.

For Seattle, those concerning patterns are on display below. (To graph your own district's staffing and enrollment trends, use this template.)

Nationally, enrollment is falling while staffing counts are climbing.

One obvious question for district leaders is whether (and how) they plan to reduce staffing counts when relief funding ends - or if not, how they plan to pay for them. While Detroit notified some staff that their positions will be eliminated, in most districts plans to right-size the district are still in the very early stages.
#4. What options are on the table?
It's not unusual for a district to put off making tough (and unpopular) budget-cutting decisions. But any delay can make a bad situation worse, especially if the overspending continues in the interim. Ultimately, when it comes time to cut budgets, most start with a commitment to protect students and classrooms, and minimize job losses.

Beyond those statements, the next steps involve some months of tinkering around the edges (postponing maintenance, freezing hiring, or cutting contracts). In the end, if the budget gap represents more than about 2% of the total district budget, districts have no choice but to cut labor costs (labor being some 80-90% of the budget).

If the budget gap represents more than about 2% of the total district budget, districts have no choice.

A better process would be to get clear on the magnitude of the deficit and move quickly to surface several budget cutting options (complete with numbers) for public debate. An easy way to start is to ballpark the number of jobs at risk using the back-of-the-envelope calculation pictured here. As shown below, the basic calculation is the number of employees times the budget gap as a percentage of annual spending.

When it comes to cutting labor, eliminating jobs isn't the only path (although it does help convey the magnitude of the challenges ahead). Reducing labor costs can also take the form of eliminating school days (via furloughs), scaling back benefits, or suspending pay raises. Getting concrete options on the table can help communities weigh the different options and offer opinions.

Where districts do pursue layoffs, they'll also need to decide who gets let go. A common default is to use seniority (aka last-in, first-out or LIFO.) LIFO tends to disproportionately hit high-needs schools, where less experienced teachers tend to be concentrated. It also often results in eliminating teachers of color. As Educators for Excellence and TNTP report, some states (like New York) require layoffs be done via seniority. Others (like Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Florida) prohibit seniority as the sole factor. In most states (like Washington, Maryland, Michigan, and Connecticut) those decisions are left to individual districts.

In most states, layoff decisions are left to individual districts.
#5. Are school closures warranted?
School closures are emotional affairs - it's understandable the information often gets covered that way. But what the drama often misses is what's at stake for families.

Given the magnitude of the gaps, a district can afford only so many staff. In a district with enrollment declines, the question becomes whether the district will spread those staff across a larger number of under-enrolled buildings or concentrate those staff in a smaller number of more fully enrolled sites.

With the former, there are fewer staff in each building, and that means students at all schools forego some of their specialists (music teachers, counselors, and the like) in order to ensure all buildings have a set of core staff (principal, core teachers, PE teacher, etc.).

Is it better for kids to stay in a school with a skeleton crew or shift schools for one that's got a full complement of staff? That's a debate worth having.

Where closures are warranted, K-12 Dive's Naaz Modan covers different strategies districts can consider in the process. Of particular interest is whether the district weighs each school's performance in deciding if it gets closed. (Students reassigned to another school tend to fare better when the school they transfer to is a higher performing one.)

What the school closing drama often misses is what's at stake for families.
When it comes to school finances, some translation is needed.
One challenge in following district finances is decoding district budget speak, which sometimes soft pedals some dire realities.

For instance, as Jessica Seamen translates in Denver: "compounding decline... [puts] financial stress on the situation" means that the district has ignored years of enrollment declines which is forcing even deeper cuts now.

In another example, Seattle Times' Monica Velez helped the Seattle community understand that "the need to consolidate into a system of well-resourced schools" translates to school closures.

In Houston, a proposal to "remove the hold harmless" means that shrinking schools will lose staff.
For journalists who aren't fully fluent in district budgeting, Georgetown University's Edunomics Lab offers a two-day finance training with some scholarship funds to defray costs.
Marguerite Roza, Ph.D., is director of the Edunomics Lab and a research professor at Georgetown University.
Previously from The Grade
How to cover schools' COVID recovery spending this spring
The scarcity mindset that plagues education news
Smart ways to cover the coming 'year of ed finance'

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Messy times ahead for school spending - kappanonline.org

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Smart ways to track budget gaps, layoff decisions, and school closing deliberations many districts will soon face.

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In Colorado, chronic absenteeism has been a major problem. Schools like Summit Hight School in Breckenridge are looking at prevention and the root cause like language barriers, transportation, and after school jobs. Another school, Poudre High School in Larimer County, as piloted an attendance program called Check & Connect.

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This past academic year, nearly one in three students in Colorado were chronically absent, missing at least ten percent of school days, according to data collected by the Colorado Department of Education. The reasons vary by child and by district - from a lack of transportation to social anxiety. As schools across Colorado see record-high levels of absenteeism, administrators are working to figure out why kids are skipping school and what to do about it.

Gisela, a sixteen-year-old student at Summit High School in Breckenridge, stopped going to school after Thanksgiving. She had gone through a breakup and was being bullied.

"So I just want to be really clear about the intention of this meeting. It's not to make you feel bad," Dave DeRose, the Dean of Students said during a recent meeting at the high school with Gisela and her mother. "I just want to hear from you and we want to make sure you feel supported to come back to school."

Gisela and her family came to Summit County from Honduras. On a Friday in December, she was wearing gold and black Nike's and a gray hoodie, pulled up. As the teenager listened to DeRose talk, she looked at her lap, tears rolling down her cheeks.

"I don't want to be here," she said. "...I don't have any friends, any peoples."

After skipping weeks of school, Gisela was asked to attend this tier three meeting which is for students who have the most absences. DeRose, along with the school's interventionist and family liaison try to persuade her to stay for the rest of the day.

"So we can set up special things for you. Like you can leave class a couple minutes early to get to your next class so you don't have to be in the hallway with them. We can find you a really cool place to eat lunch, let you leave to get your lunch early," DeRose said.

The school's interventionist offers to stay in touch over a messaging app. Derose says he can go around and talk with Gisela's teachers about the situation, something he says he doesn't typically do.

'Doing the best we can'

Attendance is a top priority here because last school year, half of students in Summit School District were chronically absent.

Based on recent student interviews about absenteeism, young people at Summit High School are missing class most often because of sickness or mental health issues, family responsibilities, transportation problems and work obligations.

"So everything from working at Walmart to helping parents with their cleaning businesses... they're working till really late at night. And then, you know, getting up in the morning is tough," DeRose said.

Nearly 40% of students at Summit High School are Hispanic. Out of the kids who miss the most school, the majority come from this group. These students say that language barriers are the main reason for skipping school. DeRose hopes to hire more Spanish-speaking staff.

District administrators are working on a new attendance policy with plans to roll it out for the 2024-2025 school year.

"Our biggest efforts around attendance have been prevention and understanding the root causes of our district," Lana Huizar, the district's equity director wrote in an email to KUNC. "While we are currently doing the best we can, we know we can do better."

This district has rolled out an attendance marketing campaign to encourage fewer than eight absences for the school year. In weekly cabinet meetings, district staff and administrators review attendance data. A new attendance team is looking at key issues - like mental health and language barriers - in order to make policy recommendations. Staff training related to attendance is set for May.

"We are doing what we can to create validating environments for students and families, which is not an overnight fix, unfortunately," Huizar wrote.

'More likely to fail courses'

In Colorado, over 250,000 students were chronically absent during the 2022-2023 school year. An absenteeism rate of 31% is down slightly from the previous year during which 35% of students were regularly skipping school.

"But we are at our second highest rate that we've ever seen since we've started calculating this, so we see it as a pretty substantial issue," Johann Liljengren, the director of dropout prevention for the Colorado Department of Education said.

Missing some school now can matter a lot down the road.

"Students with low attendance are more likely to fail courses, more likely to drop out," Liljengren said. "And the flip side of it, kids with high attendance are much more likely to stay on track and graduate with their peers."

Over the past decade, lawmakers passed bills in 2013 and 2018 limiting punishment for attendance issues and instead directing schools to work with parents and local services to figure out why a student is skipping school.

Now, as absenteeism continues to increase, many schools are creating dedicated teams, analyzing data and working to help individual students.

'The homework piles up, it's just a mountain'

Poudre High School, in Larimer County, is piloting Check & Connect, an attendance program that pairs chronically absent students with mentors. Multiple times a week, 16-year-old Jonathan Marrs and Marty DeValk, a Social Emotional Learning Specialist at Poudre High School meet to work on homework, talk about the day and just hang out. Recently, DeValk had an unassembled shelf sitting in his office.

"Like, let's put this together," DeValk said. "We were passing the directions back and forth. 'Hey, hand me the screwdriver.' Like, let's put this together and this kind of connect in that way."

This relationship has been really helpful for Marrs who stopped coming to school regularly last year. Mornings are tough: his mom leaves for work before he leaves for school.

"It's just hard to wake up and make sure that I'm getting everything done before I can actually go to school and make myself look presentable for everyone there," Marrs said.

Marrs was new to the district when he started high school and didn't feel connected socially or academically. He started falling behind in his classes.

"The homework piles up, it is just a mountain," Marrs said. "And once it starts piling up, my work slows down, and then it starts piling up even larger."

With chronic absenteeism at 36% for the past school year, a spokesperson said the district hasn't yet pinpointed one reason why numbers have been increasing but noted that student mental health struggles have been increasing as well.

DeValk thinks a lot of young people got used to isolation during the pandemic.

"So I think that just like, reminding and renewing their ability to seek help... just always reminding them that there is someone and they don't have to go at it alone, I think is really important," DeValk said.

The district plans to add two more Check & Connect pilot sites this spring, on top of the two schools already participating. Research supports the effectiveness of school-based mentorship programs in bringing absent kids back to school. In Poudre School District, so far, attendance has improved for ⅔ of the students in the program. Same is true for Marrs.

"We usually hang out during lunch. When I hang out, it boosts my mood. I'm like, alright, cool, let's go attack some more things in the day," Marrs said.

'I'm really proud of you'

At Summit High School, the attendance meeting with Gisela, her mom and school staff wrapped up after an hour. The teenager explained that she doesn't feel ready to finish out the school day but will come in on Monday to start from scratch.

Dave DeRose, the dean of students, promises to have her favorite snack in his office for her when she returns.

"I'm really proud of you for coming today. I know it wasn't easy," DeRose said.

At this point in the meeting, Gisela was looking up and nodding in agreement. She and her mom got up, said thank you and left.

"I was hoping that she would stay," Kathy Gallego, the school's family liaison and interpreter said. "I really was hoping. But I saw her face at the end. And she was smiling. So I think that went well."

Gisela did not come to school on Monday but she did make it Tuesday. DeRose dropped her snack off in class and said she was smiling.

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Chronic absenteeism is plaguing Colorado schools. Here's what two districts are doing about it.

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Colorado kids are missing a lot of school. Rates of chronic absenteeism across the state have been rising for years. Districts across Northern Colorado are scrambling to get these students back in class.