The Rochester City School District is changing the way it addresses student absences.
At a school board meeting on Tuesday, the district’s attendance department director Carly Jelsma pointed to five contributing factors that often result in students missing school: housing instability, family crises, feeling unsafe in school, bullying, and issues with transportation access.
“Across the district attendance teams are identifying these five needs, and they're able to on a weekly, bi-weekly basis, tailor their supports to what is the main cause of concern,” Jelsma said.
For the last few years, chronic absenteeism across the district has hovered above 70% for secondary students and around 60% among elementary students.
She said one approach to resolving chronic absenteeism is to build trusting relationships between the student and an adult in their school.
“Now what will happen is in every single building, students that are chronically absent will be tied to a caring adult,” Jelsma said. “It is someone who that child is tied to and they feel is there for them.”
There is more communication now between the people responsible for addressing student absences and community organizations and resources like the Monroe County Department of Human Services, she said.
School board vice president Beatriz LeBron said addressing housing concerns for students can be complicated even with that cooperation because of an overall housing crisis.
“We should be looking at creating either a liaison that specifically can take the volume of calls, and specifically work on the families. And if we have a person, one is not going to be enough,” LeBron said.
