“A national crisis that’s affecting so many of our schools and districts across the country” — that’s how Orange County School Superintendent Maria Vazquez recently described absenteeism.
The numbers are alarming. Thousands of students are considered chronically absent in Central Florida, but News 6 discovered Flagler County is beating the odds.
According to the most recent data from the Florida Department of Education, 19.4% of students in Florida were considered chronically absent, missing 21 or more days during the 2022-2023 school year. In parts of Central Florida, the absenteeism numbers were even higher.
In Polk County, for example, 31,453 or 24% of students missed more than 21 days during the 2022-2023 school year. In Lake and Orange counties, more than 23% of students were chronically absent. In Orange County alone, 55,669 students skipped at least 21 days.
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However, in Flagler County, just 16.1% of students missed that many days.
“I would definitely say that at Flagler schools, people who know the kids and people who have built the relationships with the kids, it matters to them when those students aren’t there and they notice,” said Brandy Williams, the Coordinator of Counseling Services for Flagler Schools.
Williams oversees nine social workers working exclusively in Flagler County’s 10 schools.
“Anytime a student’s not in school, it’s usually because there’s something significant going on — because most of our students want to be at school, they want to be with their friends, and they want to be engaged in their learning,” Williams said.
Williams said some of the causes may be illness, a death in the family or other life changes.
“Sometimes that looks like a divorce in the family, a loss of a job, and so oftentimes, those families find themselves temporarily displaced and we’re having to help coordinate with getting them transportation to get them to campuses,” Williams said. “The other thing that we see is a lot of mental health and substance abuse.”
The school social workers are tasked with helping families navigate those challenges while also making getting to school a top priority.
“This year, we actually have one social worker whose whole position is attendance in our district so that social worker 100% of their time is designated to specifically making sure that all of our students come to school every day,” said John Fanelli, the Coordinator of Student Supports and Behavior for Flagler Schools.
Fanelli said attendance is so critical to the overall success that combatting absenteeism became one of the district’s strategic goals.
“So a lot of times what starts out as an attendance issue becomes an academic issue, which leads to a discipline issue,” Fanelli said.
Their efforts appear to be paying off as they’ve recently doubled the number of social workers and filled every position, more seats in the classroom are also being filled.
In the past three years, Fanelli said they’ve cut the number of chronically absent students nearly in half from 1,200 students during COVID-19 to 650 chronically absent students last year.
“We’re constantly having conversations around the importance of daily school attendance with our students because it doesn’t matter how great our lessons are and how amazing our teachers are if the student is not there to get the learning,” Fanelli said.
The district has a four-step plan to get results.
At five unexcused absences, the district sends home a letter. After 10 missed days, someone from the school calls home, something the district refers to as a “barrier resolution.” A school worker tries to identify what the barrier is for the student to get to school — possibly transportation or another obstacle — and then find a solution.
“We’ve had a lot of families where they start having chronic absenteeism and just knowing that people care about them and that they’re reaching out to them, noticing that they’re not on campus has been really impactful for our students as well,” Williams said.
After 15 absent days, the district holds what it calls an AIM: an attendance improvement meeting at the school with the whole family. At 21 days, the district’s absenteeism social worker steps in to oversee those families.
Fanelli said their short-term goal is to get the number of chronically absent students down from 650 to 450, but they won’t stop working until they have 100% of students in class.
“At the end of the day, when we can go home and say that, you know, we mattered because we made somebody else feel like they mattered. It’s a great day,” Williams said.
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