Dallas ISD plans to spend millions of dollars to help solve it chronic absentee problem.
Chronic absenteeism is defined as when a student misses at least 10% of a year’s classes.
Currently, almost a quarter of Dallas ISD’s student body falls into that category, said Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde. The state average is 19%, according to the Texas Education Agency.
“Chronic absenteeism is not going away,” she told trustees at a briefing earlier this month. “Minor incremental improvement is not going to change our student outcomes. We’ve got to find a way to support them. So we wanted to try something different.”
The school board on Thursday approved spending up to $5 million on personal and software efforts designed to get the chronically absent students back into their classroom. A vendor or vendors have not yet been chosen.
The problem with absent students soared locally and nationally after the COVID-19 shutdowns. The TEA numbers pre-COVID hovered at about 11%. In 2021, 2022 and 2023 the numbers were double pre-COVID numbers.
Dallas Trustee Bryon Sanders welcomed the district spending money to tackle the district’s ongoing chronic absenteeism.
“It is one of the most important things happening in public … actually, any education right now, public, private. We’ve seen it all over the place,” Sanders said earlier this month. “I know a lot of districts are twiddling their thumbs and just kind of lamenting that we have the problem.”
Bill Zeeble is KERA’s education reporter. Got a tip? Email Bill at bzeeble@kera.org. You can follow him on X @bzeeble.
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