ALLEGHANY COUNTY, Va. – Over the 2023-2024 school year, the Alleghany Highlands Public School Division has made significant progress in curbing chronic absenteeism in its elementary schools.
Notably, there was a large jump in chronic absences after the COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in a mission to get students back to class more often. The district even conducted a survey last May asking parents to help them decide what support might help students attend school more regularly, like encouraging student engagement, helping them prepare for their adult lives and focusing on communication with the community.
Recommended Videos
Chronic absenteeism is typically defined as when a student misses 10% of the days in a given school year, which is about 18 days. The Virginia Department of Education has identified fighting chronic absenteeism as a critical way to boost test scores and help students recover from pandemic learning loss. It is also one of the three pillars of Governor Glenn Youngkin’s “All in Virginia” education plan, which allocates more than $400 million to school divisions to address learning loss. High chronic absenteeism can also damage a school’s accreditation status, which shows if a school is meeting our commonwealth’s education standards.
The survey conducted last May is intended to identify why students stay in school, and how to retain those who are chronically absent. The division is attempting to create solutions and incorporate some of the suggestions and reasons into new and effective means of keeping kids in the classroom. The district has tried to foster a fun and welcoming environment, as well as provide incentives for good attendance.
“Last year, we had attendance competitions each month among all of our schools. The school who had the best attendance rate at the end of each month was given an ice cream or snack during their lunch. Schools also gave away t-shirts, water bottles, gym bags, and other items to encourage student attendance.”
Cindy Fox, supervisor of customized learning and attendance.
As a result of some of their efforts, the four elementary schools of Alleghany Highlands saw an average of a 10.5% decrease in chronic absenteeism for the 2023-2024 school year. The school with the biggest drop was Callaghan Elementary, which saw a drop from 30.74% to 13.5%.
While elementary schools saw an improvement in these statistics, there is still significant progress to be made in middle and high schools. The school division is trying to incorporate information learned from the survey to help curb the absentee rates among the tweens and teens as soon as possible.
“The attendance task force team was overwhelmed by the responses we received in the survey. We realize that parents and guardians play such a critical role in substantially reducing chronic absenteeism. We wanted to better understand the levels of concern about absenteeism from school and the reasons for those levels.”
Cindy Fox
Fox said AHPS hopes parents will become part of a community effort to reduce high absenteeism in schools.