Chronic absenteeism is defined by the Ohio Department of Education & Workforce as any student missing at least 10% of school days for any reason. That would generally mean missing more than 8 or 9 days a semester, or more than 17 days in a full school year.
The district learned best practices, dug into program data and areas for improvement and created a plan for the coming school year, Jenna Leinasars, communications specialist, said.
She said the district has put more effective data management systems in place, enacted consistent messaging to families, community-level outreach such as city billboards, adopted a mindset of goal setting and accountability and relied on the work of attendance officers and support staff.
“The district surveyed chronically absent families, discussed ways to support those families and formed a team that will be tasked with pushing our attendance initiatives forward,” Leinasars said. “Looking ahead, the district will be focused on achieving its goal of a 93% attendance rate for the 2025-26 school year.”
Chronic absenteeism in recent years
In Springfield schools, the chronic absenteeism rate has both increased and decreased over the last five years, with the highest rate in 2021 and lowest in 2023.
It was 39.2% in 2024-25, 38% in 2023-24, 43% in 2022-23, 57.5% in 2021-22, and 21% in 2020-21.
However, district officials noted that 2024-25 had several contributed factors that led to an increased chronic absenteeism rate, Leinasars said, including threats to district buildings at the start of the school year that took weeks to rebound to normal levels, and civic unrest in November and January led to increased overall absences.
Since the rate jumped 36% from 2020 to 2021, “district and building teams have worked diligently to decrease those numbers to pre-pandemic statistics.”
As for attendance rates, it was 89% in 2024-25, 88.8% in 2023-24, and 87.2% in 2022-23.
‘School becomes a place where students want to be’
During the program from July 2024 to January, Digital Promise’s Center for Inclusive Innovation created a model called Collaborative Innovation, where districts learned methods for listening, learning and engaging students and families. They shared insights, unpacked challenges and came up with solutions.
“District teams proactively reached out to students and families through interviews and focus groups to better understand not only why students weren’t showing up, but what might make them want to,” said Baron Davis, senior advisor for Digital Promise and co-lead for the program. “The power of doing this work through a cohort model is that it doesn’t just connect districts, it builds a community of learners.”
In the program, Davis said districts listened to families and designed solutions such as creating attendance hotlines, using attendance software, buying a van to help students get to school, identified flexible learning options and reimagined schedules and worked to address root causes of transportation and housing.
“The biggest lesson? When school policies and practices transition from being punitive to nurturing, and students and families are meaningfully engaged as partners in co-research and co-design solutions, showing up becomes possible — and school becomes a place where students want to be,” he said.
Missing even two to four days a month of school has a huge impact, Leinasars said.
Missing two days a month equals 20 days a year, which breaks down to 30 hours of math instruction or 60 hours of reading/writing instruction a year.
“If the student continues to follow this attendance pattern, they will miss the equivalent of one year of education by the time they graduate from high school. This estimate doubles if the student habitually misses four days per month,” she said.
Shifting perspectives
There are several reasons why students may not be able to come to school regularly, such as reliable transportation, working a job to provide, taking care of younger siblings or the student is a new mother or father, Leinasars said.
“Much of the work of the District Attendance Officers consists of identifying these barriers and coming up with creative solutions to improve student attendance rates,” she said.
The other 16 participating districts include El Segundo Unified Schools, Lynwood Unified Schools, Mountain View Whisman Schools and Greenfield Union School District in California, Adams 12 Five Star Schools in Colorado, Wilmington Learning Collaborative in Delaware, NOLA Public Schools in Louisiana, Roselle Public Schools in New Jersey, East Irondequoit Central Schools, Hudson City Schools, Mount Vernon Schools and Suffern Central Schools in New York, Allentown Schools and Elizabeth Forward Schools in Pennsylvania, Richland School District Two in South Carolina and Spokane Public Schools in Washington.
One school Davis would highlight is Hudson because of their “notable progress” in reducing chronic absenteeism by 12% this past year. Through outreach and listening, they uncovered gaps in transportation, understanding and access that prevented students from showing up to school. They created an attendance hotline for families to communicate about absences or ask for help and bought a van to help students get to school.
Davis said they’re actively exploring the possibility of a second cohort since the first one was successful. However, as a nonprofit, continuing the work depends on securing funding, so they are looking for additional funding opportunities.
“This six-month program was a success not just because of improved attendance rates, but because districts left with a new posture: one that sees chronic absenteeism not as defiance but as data. Not as a problem to be fixed, but as a message to be decoded,” he said. “Districts emerged with an understanding of ways to shift their perspectives, gather new insights, and form deeper connections to their students and families who are navigating barriers.”
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