The end of this school year marks the second year of full-time in-person classes. But in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, like districts across the nation, getting to school no longer seems to be a high priority for many students.
Even before COVID-19 sent students home to learn from laptops, CMS had identified chronic absence as one reason Black, Latino and low-income students were falling behind. In 2019, 13% of all CMS students had missed at least 10% of their classes, or 18 days by the end of the year. That’s the definition of chronic absence.
But chronic absence rates increase with school poverty levels, in higher grades and for Black and brown students. For Black students at high-poverty high schools, it was 36% before the pandemic.
Now things are much worse. CMS social work manager Yvette Watson says the district-wide chronic absence rate was a bit over 24% in 2022-23 and just below 23% this year.
And Watson says those rates are highest at high-poverty schools with large numbers of students who are learning to speak English, Watson says.
At three schools, at least half of students are chronically absent. The highest rate — 53.5% — is at Martin Luther King Middle School in east Charlotte, where Latino students are the majority and most of the rest are Black.
Spotty attendance is a habit that starts as early as prekindergarten, Watson says. At that age, getting kids to school is the parents’ responsibility.
“They’re treating the pre-K program like day care, where you can just take them when you want,” she said.
But students start learning fundamental skills in pre-K and kindergarten. And Watson says students who fall behind are often the ones who skip class when they get older, creating a spiral of struggle.
Jobs, anxiety and bad habits
By high school, students have their own lives, and often make their own decisions about cutting school — and it’s not always about goofing off.
Jennette Bynum, a social worker at Julius Chambers High, says many teens got jobs during the pandemic. Some of them still feel like a day shift at work is preferable to a day at school.
“Making $20 to $21 an hour and you’re in high school? That money looks pretty good — to those students as well as the families, because we do have some students that are helping support the family,” she said.
Bynum says students also returned to in-person learning with high anxiety levels, “about the crowds, about the school, about the germs, just various things.”
Julius Chambers High, in northeast Charlotte, has about 2,200 students, and more than 90% of them are Black or Latino. Martin Luther King Middle, the school with the highest rate of chronic absenteeism, feeds into Chambers. And the rate there, 49%, is almost as high as at King.
When absences start piling up, Bynum and others at Chambers use phones, text messages, emails and sometimes home visits to reach parents and try to get kids back on track. The state requires schools to send parents warning letters after three, six and 10 unexcused absences.
The focus on chronic absence doesn’t distinguish between excused and unexcused absence, because both cut into learning time.
Street teams provide backup
This year CMS used “street teams” to provide backup for the staff at high-absence schools like Chambers. During the second semester, Reba Brown and Charlene Davidson would meet after their regular jobs ended — Brown is a social worker at Mallard Creek High, Davidson at North Meck — to hit the streets in search of Chambers students.
“So we’re trying to build a bridge, find out what’s going on. And see if there’s any supports that we can recommend or let the school know that they need to follow up on,” Davidson explained.
On a sunny afternoon in mid-March, they set out with a list of more than 100 addresses for hard-to-find students. Brown warns that there would be a lot of driving, and possibly not much contact.
“Sometimes we go and the house is empty. Sometimes we go and the current resident that lives there doesn’t have a clue who these people are and the student and their family no longer resides there,” Brown said.
Sometimes there are gated neighborhoods where they can’t even get inside. Sometimes they’re turned away by aggressive dogs in the yard.
Getting used to virtual classes
On this afternoon, they’d visited two houses with no results — one man said his son was on the list in error, after graduating in January — and the third was looking like another dud. But as they pulled away, a woman and a teen-age girl came to the door, so they parked and went back.
Because of student confidentiality rules, CMS wouldn’t let a reporter listen in to the initial conversation. But after speaking with Brown and Davidson, the woman and her daughter agreed to talk if they weren’t identified.
The daughter is a senior at Chambers. She says she has good grades and plans to go to college to study dental hygiene. Before the pandemic, when she was in middle school, she says she had good attendance.
“I feel like before, I went every day. I barely missed school. Like I think I’d be absent once or twice, if I was sick,” she said.
But she doesn’t deny she’s missing a lot of school now – a dozen days during the first semester and eight about halfway through the second. Like other CMS seniors, she spent the end of her eighth grade year and most of her freshman year learning remotely.
“I feel like after virtual I kind of got used to that. I feel like that’s the case with everyone though,” she said.
The social workers have heard plenty of variations on this theme.
“I don’t see the need of going in person because most of our work is online, and when we’re in class it’s just like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s in Canvas,’” the student said. “So we just sit there and, you know, do our work online. So that’s what I do: I just stay home and do it online.”
It’s true that the pandemic created digital options. But once a student hits 10 absences, CMS requires them to make up time or fail the class.
“So what are you doing to make up those days that you missed?” Davidson asked her.
“I have to, like, stay after school for like an hour or two and it makes up, like, two days,” she said.
Davidson reminds this student that CMS has a virtual high school for students who really prefer that kind of work. The teen said she considered that, but she wants to graduate with her class at Chambers.
Parents can be clueless
The social workers say home visits are sometimes the first inkling parents have that their kids are skipping. Some students get on the bus but don’t go to class. Some even block the school number on a parent’s cell phone.
When families lack stable housing, students are at added risk of missing school and parents can be especially hard to locate.
So sometimes the street team helps parents figure out how to use PowerSchool — or just call a school counselor — to keep tabs on their child.
But at this visit the mother, who was holding a much younger child, says she knew her daughter was staying home.
“But she said she was doing her work, and I know she always get 100s, so …” she tapered off.
Both mother and daughter told the street team they’d work on regular attendance for the rest of the year.
“I mean, I have been. I haven’t been absent all last week,” the student said.
“All right, small steps,” Davis said. “Good job, mom.”
Back at Chambers High, social worker Jennette Bynum said the disruption of the pandemic increased the demand for alternative schedules. She says she sometimes refers students to Stewart Creek or Commonwealth charter schools, which offer flexible scheduling and accelerated credit options.
She’d like to see CMS provide the same alternatives. Most CMS high schools are open from 7:15 a.m. to 2:15 p.m., and that means the morning bus often arrives well before sunrise. Optional afternoon or evening shifts would be ideal for students who have jobs or who just don’t want to get up, she said.
The last resort
When all efforts to get students into class fail, North Carolina law prescribes a last-ditch measure: After 10 unexcused absences and three warning letters, principals are required to notify the district attorney and the Department of Social Services if they don’t believe there’s a good-faith effort to comply with the state’s attendance law. It requires parents to make sure their kids are in school from ages seven to 16.
In past years, judges have come to CMS schools to hold mock truancy courts or scheduled special court sessions focused on violations of attendance laws.
“The goal was not conviction. The goal was really getting the parent to a place of compliance so that they could develop a plan for getting their child back to school,” District Attorney Spencer Merriweather recalls.
The pandemic closed courts as well as schools, creating confusion and controversy over how to track and prosecute truancy.
This school year, the first Friday of each month has been designated for truancy cases. Usually about a dozen cases will be on the docket.
But Merriweather and Yvette Watson, the CMS social work manager agree: That doesn’t happen fast enough to meet the goal of jolting parents into action and getting kids back in classrooms quickly.
“I’ve been to court every month since this summer, really, for cases that were filed last school year,” Watson said.
Merriweather says he’s willing to prosecute, but he wants to distinguish between “which kids are not going to school because of the parents’ ill will and which is because of the parents’ dire need.” He agrees: By the time CMS runs through its options, files a report with the magistrate’s office and meets with his staff to discuss prosecution, it can be months before a truancy case makes it into a backlogged court with too few judges.
“I don’t want to have to wait on a four-month court date to do what we need to get kids in school,” he said. “And I don’t think anyone at CMS wants that either.”
CMS recently started a truancy mediation program for ninth-graders at five schools, including Chambers. Watson says it’s too early to have data, but the goal is to have mediation centers serving all schools in the coming year.
Merriweather says his office is eager to help CMS and other community agencies to come up with better approaches for 2024-25 — ideally something that’s faster, less formal and less punitive than pursuing criminal charges.
For now, CMS is settling for a small improvement in chronic absence rates as this year draws to a close.
As for the Chambers student who talked to the street team in March, CMS says she’s on track to graduate with her class next week.
