State launching pilot program this school year to tackle absenteeism

CATHY WURZER: It is hard to believe, but students will be heading back to school in less than three weeks. This school year will mark the start of a new state pilot program to tackle absenteeism. 12 school districts were given money by the legislature to create new strategies to combat a pretty big problem in the state.

Absenteeism is defined as missing more than 10% of the school year. And in Minnesota in 2023, the Department of Education found there were more than 300,000 students statewide, or about 30%, who are considered chronically absent from school. Those numbers are even higher in Minneapolis Public Schools, where more than half of students were frequently absent last year.

To learn more about this problem and the solutions districts are implementing, is a retired researcher and former head of the Hennepin County "Be at School" program, Tim and Colleen Kaibel, the director of student retention and recovery at Minneapolis Public Schools. Tim and Colleen, thanks for taking the time to talk with us.

COLLEEN KAIBEL: Thank you.

TIM ZUEL: Hi, thank you.

CATHY WURZER: Thank you, thank you. I want to examine the problem before the potential solutions, if that's OK. Tim, I know you've been doing research for a really long time on absenteeism. Probably there are a lot of reasons behind this pretty big problem. But what do we know at this point about root causes?

TIM ZUEL: Well, in Hennepin County, where I spent most of my direct practice career, they've been collecting data on Hennepin County, which encompasses 23 school districts, for well over a decade. And they collected barrier data, as well.

Like, why aren't kids getting to school? And I believe, looking at their database over the last decade, probably the number one reason is transportation issues for kids, especially little kids getting to school. It's probably one of the biggest barriers. And I think housing has also, unstable housing has arised as a very large issue with families getting their kids in school.

CATHY WURZER: So getting back to maybe a little kids not being able to get on a bus perhaps, or having an adult help them get to the school bus stop, is that what we're talking about?

TIM ZUEL: Yeah. I mean, there was a study done when the rise of charter schools came that parents were often feeling like safety was the number one issue when their kids were waiting for a school bus, as opposed to a charter school that would have a bus come right to the house.

And they would always choose the charter school, even if the education attainment wasn't as good as the public school, and it had to do with safety. So there's these individual decisions that parents are making, which are very rational, actually. And yeah.

CATHY WURZER: But Colleen, there's got to be, there are some ramifications here for students once they start missing multiple days of school, right?

COLLEEN KAIBEL: Absolutely. And I would add to what Tim has said. We've done, in our district, we have a central office attendance team, and we did some root cause analysis. And what we found, is there are barriers. So, trauma, mental health, family responsibility, jobs, neighborhood safety, transportation.

But there are also myths that absences are only a problem if they're unexcused, sporadic versus consecutive absences aren't a problem, that attendance only matters in the older grades, and that students should stay home if they don't feel well.

And lately, it's been, you don't need to be in school to be successful. Distance learning kind of drove that in. So, there are a lot of reasons behind not coming to school. And the consequences are, that if you're not in schooled, you're not learning. But you're also not developing socially. You're missing your friendships, your social development, along with your academic development.

CATHY WURZER: So, I'm wondering, Tim, how has the approach to tackling absenteeism, how has it had to change since the pandemic? If you were telling me earlier that you've been looking at data from say, 10 years ago, this has been a growing problem, obviously, maybe exacerbated because of the pandemic.

TIM ZUEL: Yes. I mean, the pandemic opened up this, you know, obviously, online learning was a large part of the pandemic, which [COUGH] excuse me, prior to the pandemic, online learning was actually growing more and more. Students were leaving the traditional public school system and parents were opting for online learning.

But that was exacerbated during the pandemic. And then the inability, I think, for a lot of school districts to track those students after they started urging individual students to come back into the classroom again. So, it really already overburdened a system that was struggling to connect with students, especially as students aged into adolescence and getting that connection with the school district.

A couple of things that Colleen mentioned I really want to highlight. Number one, is that for small children, being in school every day is a profound protective factor against other chaos happening in their life. And so, it's always viewed on the child welfare side through child protection researchers, as being a very important protective factor for [COUGH] besides the learning environment, for the social connections that are incredibly important.

And we've also known since the early 1980s, that math and reading skills by third grade are a very good predictor about whether or not you're going to graduate from high school. And so 80% of students that achieve math and reading at third grade level in third grade, do graduate, but 20% don't. And it's a predictor.

CATHY WURZER: Colleen, I want to talk about some of the solutions now. There are strategies that the Minneapolis Public Schools will be implementing this school year, I understand. What are they specifically?

COLLEEN KAIBEL: Well, first, we have this opportunity through the state attendance pilot to really deal with things. Antiquated systems, robocalls, letters home, truancy petitions, and build new responses that are tailored to our community.

So, we're looking at getting student voice. So, having student-led attendance teams at all of our buildings. No voice is too young to be heard. And then we're looking at doing staff-led mentorings. We have a Check & Connect program districtwide that focuses on some of our highest risk students.

And what we want to do, is bring it down to the level of having our staff in the building, teachers, social workers, counselors, support staff, mentor students at a smaller level and really create that engaging, warm, welcoming environment. So that when a student walks into school, they feel that sense of belonging. They know there's an adult there that cares about them.

And then we're looking at other responses for our most chronically disengaged families that don't respond to the offer of services through Hennepin County.

CATHY WURZER: Say, can I ask get back to the kids here in terms of the peer voices? What's the role specifically? Are they helping the adults understand what they need, or are they actually just checking in with their friends and saying, hey, where are you?

COLLEEN KAIBEL: Well, a little bit of both. So, we want the students to determine, how can the students impact attendance in their building. So, is it making a change in the climate of the building? Is it doing peer-to-peer mentoring?

So, setting up, so if students say, you know what? It would really be helpful if our fifth graders mentored our first graders or our eighth graders mentored our sixth graders, setting up peer-to-peer mentoring and having their voice.

And why do they feel students aren't in school. What keeps students out of school? Are there aversions? Social anxiety, struggling academically. How do we help one another? Really building a positive school climate.

CATHY WURZER: Say, Tim, getting back to you for a moment here. So, I'm trying to remember when I was in school. Kids, if they miss, what is it, 15 days of school in a row, aren't schools by state law, forced to drop them? And then what happens?

TIM ZUEL: Yeah. So, that was actually brought up in this legislative study group earlier this week, that bipartisan being done by Representative Keeler. [COUGH] That's been an ongoing issue. Colleen can speak to it on the school side.

On the county side, it's imperative to remember that a lot of databases that we are currently working with, and Minnesota Department of Education database is a good example, is a billing database. You know, as a researcher, I'm trying to draw information out of a billing database.

So, it was set up for billing. Statutorily, schools, you know, have to notify the state that this kid has missed 15 consecutive days. They haven't been around, therefore, the school won't receive payment for the child. And unfortunately, what happens is, it gets dropped off the state database.

And there's really not a lot of clear guidance about whose responsibility it is then moving forward to capture these kids. [COUGH] You know, is it the county, who never gets notified? Or is it the school district that they were last enrolled in? We don't know. The kids could have moved out of state. If they enroll someplace else in the state, obviously, I think MDE would then find out through the billing system again.

But there's an awful lot of kids that drop through the cracks. And then we don't know the following school year, when kids go back to school, if those kids that were dropped last year, don't re-enroll. They're kind of out of the database. There is no follow through on those kids. And I don't even think anyone has a good handle on the numbers. Maybe Colleen might be able to speak to that.

CATHY WURZER: Colleen.

TIM ZUEL: Colleen's been keeping her own data on many of these kids.

CATHY WURZER: I was going to say, Colleen, this sounds like a mess. What is your MPS team doing?

COLLEEN KAIBEL: Well, we are very fortunate. Our district is committed to responding to these students who are withdrawn for non-attendance. And we have a "We Want You Back" team. It's not a big team, but it's a mighty team. And they reach out to these students.

And last year, we had 2,000 students withdrawn for 15 consecutive absences. So, we reach out as quickly as we can. We connect with the school social workers, counselors, others who have done outreach and attempted to do interventions at the school level to find out what's been done.

And then we reach out to the family. We use, you know, phone, text. We knock on their door, we use social media, anything we can do to find these families and get them re-enrolled in school, or confirm enrollment elsewhere.

CATHY WURZER: Is it working?

COLLEEN KAIBEL: It is working. We get a good number of the students back. For the number of students we lose, we don't have enough staff to give all the attention we want, but every student gets some attention. And so over half the students that we had last year, we had almost 2,000 students, that we either re-enrolled or found re-enrolled elsewhere.

We do keep track. If we didn't get a hold of you by the end of last school year and get you re-enrolled, you are on our list for the start of this school year.

CATHY WURZER: All right. I wish I had more time with you both. Thank you so much for what you're doing. We appreciate it.

COLLEEN KAIBEL: Thank you.

TIM ZUEL: Thank you.

CATHY WURZER: Been talking to Colleen Kaibel. She's the director of student retention and recovery at Minneapolis Public Schools. Tim Zuel's been with us, too, a retired researcher, former head of the Hennepin County "Be at School" program.