Absenteeism in Long Island schools: About 1 in 5 students chronically absent in 2022-23

About 1 in 5 Long Island students was chronically absent last academic year, meaning tens of thousands of them missed 18 or more days of school — a phenomenon that saw little improvement from a year earlier, according to recently released state data.

The rate of chronic absenteeism, which was a problem before COVID shut down schools in March 2020, has almost doubled in Island schools since 2018-19, according to data analyzed by Newsday. Even as COVID has receded, attendance has not bounced back in many schools.

The rate in 2022-23 was about 19%, down just slightly from about 20% in 2021-22, but much higher than in 2018-19, when it was 11%. In total, roughly 76,000 of 393,000 students in grades first through 12th missed 10% or more of the 180 instructional days for any reason in 2022-23.

The Hempstead and William Floyd districts had the highest absentee percentages on Long Island, while Floral Park-Bellerose schools had the lowest, state data shows.

The data for 2022-23 was particularly significant, as it reflected chronic absences in the first year since the pandemic that schools had no COVID-era restrictions.

“Chronic absenteeism is a predictor of declining enrollment,” said Sandy Addis, chairman of the National Dropout Prevention Center based in upstate Ballston Spa. “What will happen is kids will either drop out if they fail grades or get retained. Or the parents will choose to go private, charter … or some other options.”

The consequences of chronic absences can be profound on individual students, their peers and society, experts said. Students who chronically miss school are less likely to read proficiently by third grade and graduate from high school, research has found.

"For those kids, it's a bad outlook into the future in that if they fail courses and are retained in grades, they're probably not going to graduate statistically," Addis said.

Sizable absences also could alter the instructional pace in classrooms and school culture, experts said. Students go to school to not only learn but also to socialize with peers and adults from different backgrounds.

“That ability to be around and understand people who may or may not think like you is pretty critical to our future as a democracy,” said Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a national organization whose mission is to reduce chronic absence.

“If kids don't develop the literacy, numeracy, and all the skills they need to be successful, it's going to affect us economically,” Chang said. "We'll be less competitive … as a country.

“This is not … the new normal that we can accept," she added.

Long Island trends

The Hempstead district's rate of chronic absenteeism was 52% in 2022-23, and the William Floyd district, second-highest, was 47%, according to state data. That means about half of the two districts' student populations — thousands in each system — missed nearly four weeks of school or more.

Hempstead Superintendent Regina Armstrong said family priorities have contributed to absenteeism in her district. Some students have had to stay home to care for a younger sibling who might be sick when their parents needed to work, or students themselves started working.

“If I can’t eat or I don't have a roof over my head, school is not as important,” Armstrong said. “We're doing our best to make sure students understand the importance of trying to find work after school. But in some cases, it’s difficult because survival is real.”

Armstrong added that “COVID really was the game changer. It sent a lot of students out to the workforce because of whatever the reasons were in the household. A lot of them lost … parents or guardians or people who were taking care of them.” 

Across the Island, Floral Park-Bellerose schools had the lowest rate, 3% in 2022-23, for districts with an enrollment higher than 100. Next lowest were Herricks and Great Neck — at 6% and 6.7%, respectively. However, both rates were higher than in 2017-18, when Herricks was at 2.5% and Great Neck at 4.6%.

Nat Malkus, a senior fellow and the deputy director of education policy at Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute, said chronic absenteeism is shaping up to be "education’s long COVID," whose effects have continued to linger even after school closures, masking and other pandemic-related measures ended.

"Chronic absenteeism is going to make schools less productive,” said Malkus, whose institute tracks chronic absenteeism data.

High levels of chronic absence threaten academic recovery from the pandemic. Students already have a lot of catching up to do: Between the springs of 2022 and 2023, they recovered about one third of what they lost in math and a quarter in reading, according to an analysis by researchers at Stanford and Harvard universities.

Malkus called learning loss the biggest challenge public schools face post-pandemic. “We're not going to be able to fix the very real learning loss problem unless we have kids working hard and attending consistently in schools," he said.

Missing out on classes, connections

When students are absent, they not only miss out on instruction but also on opportunities to form friendships or find support, educators said. They go for classes, but they also might go for meals, mental health counseling, basketball games or band practices.

For some, “They'll tolerate algebra to play football, if you will,” Addis said.

The impact of their absence also can cast wider ripples beyond their own circles.

A study found that a student is more likely to miss school if 10% of the child’s classmates were absent the previous day. When a significant number of students fail to show up, it makes it harder for teachers to set classroom norms and keep up with the curriculum that may be scaffolded in units of progression.

North Bellmore schools Superintendent Marie Testa compared it to walking up a staircase.

“You would go up the first step and then you miss the next two steps,” she said. “[When] you go to the fourth step, you have gaps in your learning.”

That district, which is made up of five elementary schools, saw chronic absenteeism rates decrease from 21% to 14% over the last two school years. District officials said they added school counselors and had a "concerted, strategic effort" to communicate with families about the importance of daily attendance as well as to foster relationships.

“When children have chronic absenteeism, or gaps, they're starting behind where they should be, so you're playing a game of catch-up,” Testa said.

Turning the tide takes time

Overall, the Island's trend mirrors what’s happening nationally, though the regional average is below the nation's. Chronic absence nearly doubled nationwide, rising from 16% before the pandemic to nearly 30% by 2021-22, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education.

The most recent data collected by American Enterprise Institute from 42 states, including New York, showed an estimated 26% chronic absenteeism rate for 2022-23.

And while chronic absences affect students of all backgrounds — “We’re seeing big increases across the board,” Malkus said — they are deepening educational inequities, attendance experts said.

The highest levels of chronic absence are seen most in the nation’s highest-poverty schools, where students are more likely to struggle with barriers such as poor transportation, unstable housing and lack of access to health care, Chang said.

“The kids who are hurt the most academically by chronic absences are kids who are living in poverty, who have less resources from their families necessarily to make up for that time lost in the classroom,” she said. “Their families can't bring in the extra tutor. They may not have the money to send you to this high-quality summer program.”

Turning the numbers around takes time and intention, experts and educators said.

“Rebuilding a sense of connection, trust, engagement and relevance doesn't happen overnight,” Chang said. “You can't just assume because now we don't have those COVID restrictions, the relationship-building now will happen. It still takes intentionality.”

Team effort

Despite the overall high absences, there were some promising trends in Island schools, according to the Newsday analysis.

More than half the region’s 124 districts saw chronic absences decrease in 2022-23 from a year earlier. Uniondale and North Babylon, for example, saw hundreds of fewer students chronically absent in each district.

Uniondale was among those that saw the biggest improvements. In 2021-22, about half of the district’s 5,800 students were chronically absent. The rate dropped to 39% last year.

“During the pandemic, coming to school in person felt more optional than it ever had,” Superintendent Monique Darrisaw-Akil said. “We really had to be very intentional of our plan to get students back and get them here on time.”

Her district since has boosted its attendance teams down to the building level, and she called it a team approach.

“What we've done, I think, in making a difference is making more people own attendance,” Darrisaw-Akil said. “You can't just give it to the attendance officer. It's the counselor. It's the social worker. It's the teacher who's noticing that this child was … frequently late or absent. It’s the monitors.”

The rest of the Island’s districts, however, generally had more students missing more school.

In William Floyd schools on the South Shore, the 47% of its nearly 9,000 students chronically absent in 2022-23 was an increase from 38% the previous year. Central Islip schools saw their rate rise to 40%, from 25%. Central Islip officials did not respond to a request for comment.

William Floyd officials also declined to comment, but spokesman James Montalto in a statement noted the years of reiterated messages to students to stay home if they feel sick.

“Health authorities, with the assistance of the media, have continued to warn against the dangers of the ‘tripledemic’ of COVID, RSV and the seasonal flu, which has also likely contributed to greater awareness of not putting others at risk,” Montalto wrote. “We are hopeful that with the easing of CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines and the end of the winter season, that attendance will continue to steadily improve.”

Possible solutions 

Broadly speaking, children miss school for four main reasons, said Robert Balfanz, director of the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore:

• Outside factors. A student may have to work to help support the family or take care of a younger sibling at home.
• Bullying, anxiety or other stresses.
• Students didn't do well in school before, and then become disengaged because they are behind.
• Misinformation. For example, parents underestimate how much school their child has missed and are more likely to permit additional absences.

That fourth barrier is easier to clear with better communication. Districts including Uniondale send families bilingual letters on which they highlight the number of days absent, and the corresponding percentage points in bold when students are chronically absent.

The other circumstances, along with transportation issues, mental health struggles, food and housing insecurity, can be difficult to tackle. Districts across the country have tried old and new methods.

In one district in Pittsburgh, grandmothers made morning wake-up calls to families. A district in North Carolina experimented with telemedicine and teletherapy. In Virginia, a judge moved her courtroom once a month to a middle school, a barber gave free haircuts at school, and officials put a donated washer and dryer in the building.

Here on the Island, staff in the Middle Country district, in Brookhaven Town, have made more home visits. The Bayport-Blue Point district increased its support staff, adding social workers to its elementary schools. Many districts send reminders ahead of bad weather and on days near holidays where staff anticipate lower-than-usual attendance.

In Hempstead, Armstrong said the district continues its outreach to families.

"You can call. You can say: 'Hey, we missed little Johnny. Where is he?' " she said. "We can send attendance teachers out to homes, which we do a lot, right? We write letters to parents. Phone calls are made."

At Walnut Street Elementary School in Uniondale, social worker Quyen Rovner is part of the “A-team” — the A is short for attendance.

Rovner and others typically meet in Principal Kevin Bracht’s office on Fridays to review attendance data and a list of students flagged over absences. The team goes over graphs showing daily attendance and breakdowns of those who are “trending chronic” and “nearly chronic,” among other categories.

In those weekly meetings, they try to get to the bottom of why students miss school. In one case, the student's attendance suffered because of lack of sleep as the family lived in one hotel room, Rovner said. 

“The children often complain that they will wake up because there's another child crying, or they wake up because one of the other siblings is on their tablet all night, or if one is sick, they are all sick,” Rovner said.

The school connected the mother with resources to get more space and better sleeping accommodations, Rovner said.

“Because some of that weight has been lifted from the other things that they're dealing with, with their family situation after school hours ... while they're here, they're happy, they're healthy, they're engaged and they're flourishing,” she said.

In many instances, it takes time and effort to find the root causes of chronic absences. 

“Some of these cases, we don't see improvements for six months to a whole school year,” Rovner said. “But we're patient.”