Positive News About HCSD

An article was published last month in Education Week about the Hudson City School District: "What School Leaders Learned When They Talked to Families About Absenteeism." The following is quoted from the article:

When administrators in New York's Hudson City school district set out on a yearlong journey to better understand why students were missing school and how the district could boost attendance, some thought they had a good grasp on the barriers families faced in making sure their children showed up every day.

But once the work--which focused heavily on family engagement and feedback through surveys and conversations--began, there were several surprises.

Some families in the 1,600-student district south of Albany didn't send their children to school when it was rainy. In some cultures, administrators learned, it's believed that if a child's head gets wet in the rain, they will catch a cold. Some didn't understand the bus schedule and didn't know how to ask for help. Others didn't have transportation, and walked long distances pushing their young children in strollers, sometimes in the freezing cold.

According to the article, as an outcome of the study and the efforts to address the root causes of absence revealed in the study, chronic absenteeism, which is defined as missing at least 10 percent of school days for any reason, was reduced by 12 percent across the district.