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 El Salvador. 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.”
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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.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to correct an error. Gisela, a student a Summit High School, is from El Salvador, not Honduras.
