During the 2022-23 school year, a majority of students at Summit School District were chronically absent, meaning they missed more than 10% of school days. 

The district finished that school year with 50.5% of students marked as chronically absent, which was an increase from the 2021-22 school year’s rate of 47.8%. Both school years were higher than the statewide average for the 2022-23 school year, which was around 31%, and higher than comparable school districts such as the Eagle County School District and Steamboat Springs School District, whose rates were 30.4% and 14.9%, respectively, during the 2022-23 school year.

The stats spurred action among concerned staff members at Summit School District, who started a committee to address the issue and launched a series of initiatives which ultimately brought the chronic absenteeism rate down to 40.8% for the 2023-24 year. 

Summit Middle School assistant principal Erin Dillon and Summit High School assistant principal David DeRose are leading the charge to make improvements.

“I just saw such a clear connection between kids who had poor attendance and either the dropout rate or kids who were struggling (with mental health),” Dillon said. 

Efforts to address chronic absenteeism are geared toward the middle school and the high school, where rates are the highest. According to Colorado Department of Education data, the high school saw a rate of 61.4% while the middle school recorded a rate of 43.1%. 

DeRose said the absenteeism committee’s work at the high school in the past year and a half gave insight into why students are skipping school. 

Students are placed into three tiers. The first accounts for students whose attendance rates are over 90%, the second accounts from students whose attendance rates are 89-80% and the third accounts for students whose attendance rates are below 79%. Students in the bottom two tiers are assigned an advisory teacher who is their advocate, and this person does attendance check-ins and interviews the student. Check-ins and interview intervals increase based on which tier the student falls into, DeRose said. 

Based on the interviews, the committee learned reasons for absences included: sickness, family responsibilities, transportation issues, school activities such as sports, work obligations and mental health-related challenges. 

District representatives said they have worked to remove some of these barriers through actions such as connecting students to mental health resources and placing focus on retaining and hiring transportation employees to support reliable access to school.

DeRose said one of the most successful tactics the committee has deployed was a new tool which informs parents about their child’s absentee issues and creates an open line of communication between them and the school. 

Both the middle and high schools have created incentives to encourage strong attendance that uses a point system called Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS). Rewards at the high school entail a shop where students can cash in points for things such as fidget spinners. 

Alongside incentivizing strong attendance, the district has also begun disincentivizing poor attendance. 

If a student’s chronic absenteeism continues after intervention, they may be subject to losing their ability to get a hall pass to leave a classroom while class is in session and need to be accompanied by a staff member. They also could lose their “passing period” or the couple minutes given to students to get to their next class. If they lose this privilege, they have to leave class two minutes early to get to their next class, which essentially strips them of their ability to socialize with friends in the hall. 

“We don’t ever give a kid an in-school suspension for attendance,” DeRose said. “We don’t ever give a kid an out-of-school suspension or any kind of thing that would remove them from the learning environment.”

Additionally, students could be banned from activities such as school dances or football games until their attendance improves.

The committee working to combat absenteeism revamped an initiative it launched last year related to athletics. Students who were considered chronically absent weren’t eligible to participate in athletics. But, because of what DeRose described to be “miscommunication and misunderstandings” with the requirement last year, it has since changed the metric to relate to unexcused absences as opposed to all absences. 

Summit School District still trails behind other comparable districts when looking at 2023-24 school year data despite the progress its made. Eagle County School District had a chronic absenteeism rate of 31.3%, Steamboat School District had a rate of 19.6%, Park County School District had a rate of 33.9% and Lake County School District had a rate of 18.4%.

Summit School District is working with other school districts through the Colorado Department of Education on best practices to encourage strong attendance.