Students return to the classroom today in the Santa Fe Public Schools district, and school officials are once again focusing on what has been a key challenge in recent year—chronic absenteeism.
A June report released by the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee indicated that for the academic year ending in 2023, Santa Fe had an absenteeism rate of 50.8 percent.
The state overall ranked last in the nation in chronic absenteeism at 39 percent.
Chronic absenteeism is a term applied to any student who misses more than ten percent of their classes, whether excused or unexcused.
The chief equity, diversity, and engagement officer at Santa Fe Public Schools is confident that the numbers improved during the most recent academic year.
Crystal Ybarra says that the COVID-19 shut-down created a host of challenges that are lessening but that students, families, and schools are continuing to contend with.
“Some of them are related to job loss that came out of the pandemic—families needing to prioritize their basic needs, I don't think they're intentionally deprioritizing education, but when you're looking to secure those basic needs, sometimes that comes first. We also have seen mental health issues and social wellness issues—the need increase.”
New state funding has helped the district to address the problem. One innovation is a team of attendance coaches.
Each one works with several different schools to undergird a system where districts respond through phone calls, texts, home visits, and an ongoing effort to keep all students engaged, especially the ones whose absences are starting to pile up.
Ybarra says the attendance coaches are a key element in the district’s multifaceted strategy.
"They help come up with creative, innovative ideas for specific school sites to increase engagement and increase positive school culture. And then on the backend, when students are not getting engaged, just from those teacher phone calls, from the attendance team outreach, from the principal outreach, they step in and go ahead and call and try to reengage at a district level with those parents and the students."
Santa Fe Public Schools currently has four attendance coaches—and one vacant position to fill out the team. Each coach has a caseload of multiple schools and as many as about 2,000 students.
A focus for those coaches as school begins today is to train staff members and ensure that everyone is helping comply with the state’s Attendance for Success Act, passed in 2019 to improve attendance taking and reporting.
