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UFT: Chronic absenteeism must be addressed
Nov 20, 2008 12:40 PM
City Councilman Bill de Blasio (left) listens as Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson questions the UFT representatives.
Following an explosive new study showing that chronic absenteeism in city schools is a far larger problem than the Department of Education has reported, the City Council fast-tracked hearings on the issue on Nov. 12.
The DOE’s chief of school and youth development, Elayna Konstan, who was the first to testify, emphasized that daily attendance rates are at their highest level in 15 years, and that DOE has sophisticated new data systems to monitor attendance.
But that testimony begged the issue. High daily attendance rates can actually mask long-term absentees, the report found. And data alone is not a remedy.
“We need to fix what the data identifies,” UFT Vice President Michael Mulgrew testified.
Mulgrew announced that the UFT plans to host a summit early next year as a way to prompt a citywide initiative to address chronic absenteeism.
The report, “Strengthening Schools by Strengthening Families,” by the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, looked at the percentages of students who were chronically absent. By this measure, the authors found one in every five elementary school students missed at least a month of school last year, with the problem clustered in high-poverty neighborhoods of the city. What’s more, of 124 schools with chronic absentee levels above 30 percent, 75 got an A or B on their School Progress Reports.
The reasons for chronic absenteeism range widely, according to the report, from high asthma rates, to the lack of stable housing, to families who take students out of school for extended visits to relatives overseas.
In increasingly sharp questioning, Council members asked the DOE’s Konstan and Lilian Garelick, who oversees attendance, whether the DOE had plans to address each of these factors.
The DOE “looks at” educational neglect, child abuse, bias and harassment reports, and provides “content experts” to borough teams, who pass the content on to school teams, the school officials testified. There is also a “data exchange” between the DOE and the Administration for Children’s Services, they said.
UFT Vice President Michael Mulgrew (right) testifies that “we need to fix what the data identifies,” while Chapter Leaders (from left) Steve Grossman (attendance teachers), Angela Reformato (guidance counselors) and Ann Englesbe (school psychologists and social workers) look on.
But Konstan and Garelick could not say where levels of asthma were worst, whether they would assign more attendance teachers, or what they might do about extended family trips. Nor could they tell whether schools comply with the attendance plans they file.
Mulgrew called the new report “a wake-up call” and warned that the economic downturn will only increase the need for “safety net” services for families.
“The DOE’s answer cannot simply be to say this is one more obligation a principal must fulfill,” he told the Council. “A workable solution is going to require collaboration between the city and the community.”
Angela Reformato, the UFT chapter leader for guidance counselors, also testified, telling the Council members that counselors play a critical role in identifying the core issues underlying specific absenteeism cases and linking students and families to services. Many guidance counselors spend nearly all their time on special education issues because they are among the few with the relevant expertise, she said. For all students, more counselors are needed, she said, especially in the elementary schools.
Ann Englesbe, the UFT chapter leader for school psychologists and social workers, described for the Council just how hard it can be to address chronic absenteeism.
“I dealt with a case recently where a girl was staying home regularly because her mother had seizures, and she was afraid to leave her alone in the house,” she said. “It can really run the gamut — from bullying to child abuse to dealing with the death of a sibling or parent.”
Steve Grossman, chapter leader for the school system’s 394 attendance teachers, told the hearing, “Adequate staffing amounts to more feet on the street doing the very tedious and unglamorous, labor-intensive casework. There is no substitute for this. A computer program does not intervene with children. A robocaller does not return a kid to school.”
