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Source: https://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Schools-work-overtime-to-find-students-gone-15980557.php
Schools work overtime to find students gone missing
Moriah Balingit, The Washington Post
Feb. 25, 2021
Updated: Feb. 25, 2021 7:17 p.m.
DETROIT - Kenneth Chapman Sr. was hopeful as he navigated a hulking Detroit Public Schools van down the street, pulling up to a brick home. Out front, there were signs that the girl he was looking for lived inside. Amid the discarded plastic cups in the yard, there was a ball, and on the porch a small bike, painted fluorescent pink.
"Normally when I get to the house and I see toys or bikes, I think, 'OK, somebody's going to be here,' " Chapman said.
But when he knocked, no one appeared.
This was one of the two dozen stops Chapman, who works in the school system's Family and Community Engagement Office, would make, looking on this chilly day in late October for students who had been missing classes. Some of the children on the list had worrisome numbers of absences this early on in the school year. But there were 3,000 students the district could not account for at all.
School districts across the country that closed buildings in mid-March in response to the coronavirus pandemic handled the transition to remote learning with varying levels of success. During the disruption, schools lost track of students. Many students who were present in the classroom in early March could not be found online. And others who showed up in the spring haven't been seen since.
Even before the pandemic, districts had to track down children who had stopped showing up to school or had failed to appear for a new school year. They have strong incentives to find them; school funding is often allocated on a per-pupil basis. Sometimes it turns out students have moved and enrolled in other districts. Other times they can't be found and are removed from the rolls.
But this year, students have disappeared from classes in unprecedented numbers, forcing districts to rethink their approach to those who stop showing up. Many districts, cognizant of the damage that lost school time can cause, have employed extraordinary efforts to track down students to ensure that they are safe and have devices to learn. Others, like Detroit and Miami, have kept students on rosters even after they failed to show for an entire month. North Dakota began tracking attendance for all schools on a daily basis, and several schools used coronavirus aid to hire family liaisons to find missing students.
Several states have seen precipitous drops in public school enrollment this school year, and many have seen a rise in the number of students enrolled in private schools or being home-schooled. In addition, the children who would have started preschool or kindergarten in the fall are staying home in droves, as those grades are not mandatory in most states. But there's another category of students: those who were supposed to be in classes this year but still have not appeared.
In North Carolina, a state education official told state lawmakers that more than 10,000 students have not been accounted for. New Mexico is still searching for more than 12,000 students who were enrolled in public schools before the pandemic hit but never returned in the fall.
Katarina Sandoval, New Mexico's deputy secretary of academic engagement and student success, said that in previous years, the number of students who failed to come to school was so small that they did not even have a name for them. Many of them were high school dropouts...
Schools work overtime to find students gone missing
Moriah Balingit, The Washington Post
Feb. 25, 2021
Updated: Feb. 25, 2021 7:17 p.m.
DETROIT - Kenneth Chapman Sr. was hopeful as he navigated a hulking Detroit Public Schools van down the street, pulling up to a brick home. Out front, there were signs that the girl he was looking for lived inside. Amid the discarded plastic cups in the yard, there was a ball, and on the porch a small bike, painted fluorescent pink.
"Normally when I get to the house and I see toys or bikes, I think, 'OK, somebody's going to be here,' " Chapman said.
But when he knocked, no one appeared.
This was one of the two dozen stops Chapman, who works in the school system's Family and Community Engagement Office, would make, looking on this chilly day in late October for students who had been missing classes. Some of the children on the list had worrisome numbers of absences this early on in the school year. But there were 3,000 students the district could not account for at all.
School districts across the country that closed buildings in mid-March in response to the coronavirus pandemic handled the transition to remote learning with varying levels of success. During the disruption, schools lost track of students. Many students who were present in the classroom in early March could not be found online. And others who showed up in the spring haven't been seen since.
Even before the pandemic, districts had to track down children who had stopped showing up to school or had failed to appear for a new school year. They have strong incentives to find them; school funding is often allocated on a per-pupil basis. Sometimes it turns out students have moved and enrolled in other districts. Other times they can't be found and are removed from the rolls.
But this year, students have disappeared from classes in unprecedented numbers, forcing districts to rethink their approach to those who stop showing up. Many districts, cognizant of the damage that lost school time can cause, have employed extraordinary efforts to track down students to ensure that they are safe and have devices to learn. Others, like Detroit and Miami, have kept students on rosters even after they failed to show for an entire month. North Dakota began tracking attendance for all schools on a daily basis, and several schools used coronavirus aid to hire family liaisons to find missing students.
Several states have seen precipitous drops in public school enrollment this school year, and many have seen a rise in the number of students enrolled in private schools or being home-schooled. In addition, the children who would have started preschool or kindergarten in the fall are staying home in droves, as those grades are not mandatory in most states. But there's another category of students: those who were supposed to be in classes this year but still have not appeared.
In North Carolina, a state education official told state lawmakers that more than 10,000 students have not been accounted for. New Mexico is still searching for more than 12,000 students who were enrolled in public schools before the pandemic hit but never returned in the fall.
Katarina Sandoval, New Mexico's deputy secretary of academic engagement and student success, said that in previous years, the number of students who failed to come to school was so small that they did not even have a name for them. Many of them were high school dropouts...
