I came across data last year that showed that regular attendance had dropped nearly 20 percentage points from pre-pandemic to 2022-23.
Since then, I've been chipping away at a story that aimed to explain why that drop may have occurred and what the school system was doing about it.
Part of the answer was what I had feared: The pandemic disrupted kids' cycles of getting up, getting on the bus and going to school. Their "distress tolerance" is down, a mental health specialist told me. And, in the older grades, cell phones add an enormous amount of social pressure to vulnerable students.
From bubbles on Friday mornings, to occasional online classes and school-wide mantras, schools across the district are approaching the issue differently, but all with the same goal: to get kids to school and keep them there. You can read my story in print tomorrow, or online.
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