Meridian and Lauderdale County public school districts are testing new ways to engage students, hoping to motivate them to show up for class each day as post-pandemic absenteeism in local schools continues to outpace the state average.

It isn’t just a local or state problem. Nationwide, schools have struggled to deal with a cultural shift that seems to have occurred since the COVID-19 pandemic where more students now are missing more school days each year.

The Mississippi Department of Education defines chronic absenteeism as missing at least 10% or more of the school year, which equates to about two days a month or 18 days a year, for any reason, excused or unexcused.

During the 2023-2024 school year, Mississippi’s chronic absenteeism rate for its public schools was 24.4%. By comparison, 30.65% of the Lauderdale County School District student population and 32.71% of Meridian Public School District’s students were chronically absent. That’s more than double the percentage of students who were considered chronically absent in 2018-2019, the year before the COVID pandemic, when 14.82% of Lauderdale County’s students and 15.11% of Meridian’s students were chronically absent. Statewide, the chronic absenteeism rate was 13.1% during 2018-2019.

“The message from schools changed during COVID because before the pandemic if you were a little sick, it was ‘come on to school,’ and if you were majorly sick it was ‘stay home,’” said Ken Hardy, Lauderdale County School District’s director of federal programs, student data and assessment.

During the pandemic, the message from school districts became “don’t come even if you are a little sick,” he said, in case the student was contagious and quickly spread their illness through the class.

“So we changed our narrative,” Hardy said. “… and we haven’t reversed back because we’re still, I mean COVID numbers are down but there’s still some community transmission, but we haven’t changed our policies to the pre-COVID way of saying, ‘We’re going to push attendance at the expense of maybe getting some students sick from time to time.’”

Before the pandemic, school districts pushed attendance with things like bonus points on a test, class parties, being able to participate in extracurricular activities and extra recess because state funding at the time was calculated by average daily attendance, or by averaging a school’s daily attendance for the second and third months of the academic year. A new state funding formula, passed earlier this year, bases funding on net enrollment rather than average daily attendance.

Nearly five years after the start of the pandemic, school districts are finding absenteeism is a stubborn problem they can’t find an easy solution to resolve.

“I think, for me, the whole nation has never really gone back to the way it was before COVID, and so we are seeing that the school is not separated from the rest of the world,” said Rosalind Operton, assistant superintendent of student support for Meridian Public Schools.

LaVonda Germany, MPSD director of positive behavioral interventions & support and student supports, agreed.

“I never thought COVID would have the impact that it has had this far out,” she said. “That’s just me, but I think it has made us as educators kind of rethink how we do some things, but I didn’t think it was going to continue to impact like this.”

According to research from the U.S. Department of Education, chronic absences can derive from multiple, often interconnected factors. Among those are an actual student illness; trauma; family responsibilities, such as taking care of a younger sibling or an elderly relative; a family vacation; a conflicting work schedule for high school students who hold part-time jobs; latch-key kids who are expected to get themselves up and to school after a parent leaves for work; lack of transportation or missing a ride to school; increased student anxieties about being in larger groups; and student disengagement as some of the top reasons for absences.

Locally, high schools are driving the higher rates with 47.61% of Northeast Lauderdale High School’s students chronically absent last year, followed by Meridian High at 46.96%, Southeast High at 40.62%, West Lauderdale at 36.75% and Clarkdale at 29.65%. Among elementary schools, the city’s Parkview Elementary had the lowest rate of chronic absenteeism at 13.32%  followed by Poplar Springs Elementary at 16.89%. Chronic absenteeism at the other city and county elementary schools ranged from 22% to 32% and from 25% to 39% at middle schools.

“Some of our older students that we’ve met with (about absenteeism), they may have a job, and if they are asked to stay over longer hours at work, they may say okay,” Hardy said. “Especially some students who are potentially looking to withdraw, or drop out of high school. Some of them mention that school is conflicting with their job. They’re either working at night, and they get home and they’re tired and they have trouble waking up the next day or, in some cases, their boss asks if they can work during the day, ‘Can you miss that day to come in? We really need you.’ So that does happen from time to time, but it is a very small number of students that would affect.”

Educators also worry they are seeing changing parental views placing less importance on in-person learning.

Operton believes schools are going to have to make some shifts in how they engage students and get them more involved so they want to be in the classroom each day. Students may not think missing a day or two a month will affect their learning, but it does, she said.

Poor attendance, for example, can influence whether students are reading proficiently by the end of third grade, when they are required to pass a reading test to move up a grade, Germany noted. By sixth grade, chronic absenteeism can become an indicator the student will eventually drop out of high school.

“As a community and as a school district, we want all of our kids in school, so we have to make school attractive and make them see the need for school,” Operton said.

Locally, schools have implemented intervention practices, monitoring student attendance with teacher calls to a student’s home after a set number of missed days. In city schools, if the student continues to miss days after the teacher call, then principals are making the call to parents.

At West Lauderdale Elementary, where 22.35% of students were chronically absent last year, they are doing a classroom challenge where each day a class has all students present, then the class receives a letter toward spelling the word KNIGHTS, Hardy said.

“Each time they spell the word, they get an incentive,” he said. For example, the first time, they may receive popsicles and an extra recess for a reward, then maybe a popcorn party.

Students at Southeast Middle School love Crocs slip-on shoes. Anyone who receives perfect attendance for the month receives a Croc charm for their shoes. Then the names of those who receive perfect attendance for the month are put into a drawing for a free pair of Crocs, Hardy said. Also, the school allows open lunch seating outdoors for students who have perfect attendance for the month.

In the Meridian district, schools are finding ways to increase student engagement by encouraging them to join clubs, organizations or an athletic team so they can build relationships with other students and be more inclined to want to come to school, Operton said.

“We’re trying to get all of our kids connected to something whether it’s the arts, we’re really pushing the arts, whether it’s band, which is also part of the arts, whether it’s football or wrestling, you know, something that lets the kids feel like they have a connection to other students,” she said.

MPSD schools also have great school community sponsors that donate items to be used as incentives for perfect attendance, Operton said.

Both districts say they also are working to stress to parents and other caregivers the importance of school attendance and how in-person learning is essential for the student’s success.

They suggest waiting to schedule family vacations when students are out of school. Also, parents should call the school when their child is sick or going to be absent and turn in a doctor’s excuse the first day their child returns so their absence is marked excused, Germany said. In addition, parents can help by encouraging their child to attend school in person and not checking them out unnecessarily.

Chronic absenteeism should not be confused with truancy, they noted.

“Truancy only deals with unexcused absences. Chronic absenteeism is going to be an absence for any reason, excused or unexcused. With truancy, schools are required to report to the attendance officers at 5, 10 and 12 unexcused absences,” Operton said.

The administrators said both districts are aware of the high chronic absenteeism rates and have been working, along with the Mississippi Department of Education, for the last few years to address it by trying ideas that are working in other school districts and coming up with their own initiatives.

“We want parents to know that we want their students here. We want the kids at school,” Operton said. “We want them to get an education, and we want them to feel as though they belong.”