DUVAL COUNTY, Fla. – A nationwide trend indicates that the rate of students missing school has spiked since the pandemic, and advocates are sounding the alarm in Duval County.
When a student misses 20 or more days of the school year in Florida, it is considered “chronic absenteeism.
In Duval County Public Schools, more than a third of students were chronically absent last year, putting them at risk in the short term of academic and behavioral issues and in the long term of at risk of poverty and crime.
“It is an attendance crisis that we’re in right now,” said Katrina Taylor, who is the director of School Behavioral Health for Duval County Public Schools. “I oversee all facets of mental health for the district to ensure that we’re removing those non-academic barriers to student outcomes.”
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Those barriers have grown in the wake of the pandemic, and so have DCPS’s rates of chronic absenteeism. District data shows the rates have doubled, going from 16% of students chronically absent in the 2018-19 school year to 34% of students last school year.
“Oftentimes when we have students that have missed been chronically absent, there’s some type of trauma,” Taylor said.
A News4JAX analysis found Duval County public and charter schools with high percentages of minority students and high percentages of economically disadvantaged students tended to have higher rates of students missing school more frequently.
“Those are traumas. Right? When we’re talking about poverty, right, we’re talking about individuals living in neighborhoods that they don’t feel safe. Those are definitely barriers,” Taylor said.
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She said traumas could be homelessness, crime in their neighborhood, an incarcerated parent, or other family issues.
According to the CDC, the COVID-19 pandemic created traumatic stressors for kids. In 2021, 55% of high school students reported experiencing emotional abuse by a parent or other adult in the home– including being sworn at, insulted, or put down.
More than a quarter (29%) reported a parent or other adult in their home lost a job.
But the CDC also found students who felt supported at school were more resilient.
And in Jacksonville, support is coming from within the district — and from outside partners — like the Jacksonville non-profit MyVillage Project.
“Our main program is Project Daily Attendance,” said MyVillage Project founder Ronnie King.
King said he’s partnered with other organizations to encourage attendance at seven local elementary schools with positive reinforcement.
“We celebrate these students, we’ll go out to the schools every two weeks, you know, just give the students reward certificates, toys, just to say, congratulations for coming to school,” King said. “It really just kind of helps the school leaders just build a culture, you know, really around attendance and around showing up.”
DCPS students who miss a lot of school in a short window of time may face consequences along with their parents, including a referral to the State Attorney’s Office.
But Taylor said efforts are made to meet with families before it gets to that point and offer resources.
“What I want to be clear in this is we’re not pointing fingers at the parent because we don’t know that parent’s story. We’re not pointing fingers at the student, at the school district. But we understand that everybody needs to be a part of this puzzle to ensure that our students are successful,” she said.
It’s a community issue that’s led the mayor to join with the school district and local non-profits to address it.
News4JAX is expecting to hear that community plan to keep kids in the classroom in the coming days.