In spring 2021, administrators at Hunt Middle School in Burlington reached out to staff at the Sara Holbrook Community Center for help. A year into the pandemic, students were still learning remotely half of the days. Around 20 middle schoolers weren’t showing up for in-person or online classes at all.
Hunt administrators wondered whether Sara Holbrook had a van and a staff member who could accompany a school employee to try to get those students back to class. Sara Holbrook, a nonprofit that has offered afterschool and summer programs to Burlington youths since 1937, was willing to help.
Each weekday morning, Sara Holbrook employee Ethan McCoski and Hunt behavior interventionist Tonya Desjardin would drive around Burlington — breakfast bags and encouraging notes in hand — and knock on students’ doors. At first, hardly any would answer, Desjardin remembered, so they would leave the items on the doorstep. The next day, the notes and food were always gone.
After a few weeks, kids started answering the door and getting in the van. But once the students arrived at Hunt, they had trouble adapting. Many had anxiety or lacked motivation; staff at Sara Holbrook and Hunt agreed that these students needed a greater level of support.
That prompted them to create a more formalized outreach program to help chronically absent students return to school. Several such programs in the state pair school districts and community organizations to address chronic absenteeism — an intractable problem that already-burdened school districts often struggle to address on their own. These initiatives aim to build relationships and trust with students and families, rather than blaming or punishing them.
Middle schoolers in the Burlington program meet weekly with Sara Holbrook outreach staff, either one-on-one or in small groups, for cooking and science projects, snowboarding and mountain biking, and field trips to fishing holes and nature trails. The quality time helps students strengthen their social-emotional skills and build positive relationships with adults.
Now in its third year, the program serves around two dozen students annually. Last school year, it led to improved attendance for 92 percent of participants, according to data from Sara Holbrook.
“They get the chance to just be themselves and know themselves, which is really hard in middle school.” Melanee Alexander
Hunt principal Melanee Alexander said she initially was skeptical of a program that sends students off campus for several hours each week. But she’s come to see the many ways it benefits kids.
“They get the chance to just be themselves and know themselves, which is really hard in middle school,” Alexander said. They get “to work with a trusted adult, someone outside of the school, which is also really important.”
Absenteeism is a national problem that worsened during the pandemic. A recent Stanford University study found that chronic absenteeism in U.S. public schools nearly doubled between the 2018-19 school year and 2021-22. Missing school regularly doesn’t just hurt academic achievement; kids who are absent a lot are more likely to drop out and to get ensnared in the criminal justice system. Children living in poverty are two to three times more likely to be chronically absent, according to national nonprofit Attendance Works.
At Hunt, one of two middle schools in the Burlington School District, the rate of chronic absenteeism — defined as missing at least 10 percent of days in a school year — rose from 15 percent during the 2018-19 school year to around 34 percent three years later, district data show. In 2022-23, it decreased slightly, to 29 percent.
Desjardin, the Hunt behavior interventionist, said working with Sara Holbrook means there’s another set of eyes on kids who might otherwise go unnoticed. Since the program started, Desjardin said, she’s seen many success stories, from one student who’s learned to better manage their anger to another who not only returned to school but also became passionate about snowboarding.
Desjardin, though, worries about the students. The program is only for middle schoolers, meaning that they won’t have the same support once they get to high school.
Sara Holbrook’s director of development, Sarah Daluisio, said the center would love to expand the program — which costs around $130,000 annually — but lacks the money. The district has declined to chip in so far, Daluisio said, so the nonprofit has applied for several grants.
For now, Sara Holbrook is doing what it can with limited resources. Izzy Cline, a recent University of Vermont graduate, starting working at the program two years ago through a senior-year internship. As part of her coursework, she designed assessments to gather student feedback about the program. Now Cline runs it, spending four days a week working with students, both individually and in groups of four to six, during the school day.
Sometimes she takes them to the teen center, a large room with hot-air balloons painted on the wall at the Robert Miller Community and Recreation Center, conveniently located next door to Hunt. There’s Ping-Pong, pool and foosball tables, crafting supplies, and a basketball court. Other times, Cline takes students to discover spots such as Rock Point and the Colchester Causeway.
Because students look forward to their time with Cline, the school can use it as a negotiating tool: If kids successfully make it through classes during the first half of the week, for example, they get to spend time with Cline.
On Mondays and Fridays, students in the program can also go to Sara Holbrook’s teen center for its afterschool program for middle schoolers, which offers hands-on projects, homework help and a hot meal. Around 35 students attend each session.
“They don’t believe they’ll ever be a kid who excels. They don’t feel like they’re smart.” Izzy Cline
At 23 years old, Cline thinks her youth helps her connect with the students. She understands things such as phones and social media in a way that some teachers might not.
Students praised the program in an anonymous survey last year.
“At school, they hear us talk but they don’t understand,” one wrote, “but here, you do.”
“It’s a safe place,” wrote another. “I don’t have to worry when I’m with Izzy. I can just be me.”
Cline said many of the students lack self-esteem and self-efficacy. “They don’t believe they’ll ever be a kid who excels,” she said. “They don’t feel like they’re smart.” One of her roles is to help them build their confidence.
The Burlington program shares similarities with one the Lamoille Restorative Center in Hyde Park has run since the 1990s. The scope of that program has expanded since the pandemic, thanks to an influx of federal COVID-19 relief money, though that is now dwindling. The center’s executive director, Heather Hobart, said its program is the largest targeting chronic absenteeism in the state.
Currently, the nonprofit works with 20 schools in three supervisory unions: Lamoille North, Lamoille South and Orleans Southwest. Each district pitches in around $125,000 annually so the center can hire student engagement specialists — one per supervisory union — who help get chronically absent students back to class.
They use different strategies: visiting students’ homes to discuss why they aren’t coming to school, working with school nurses to address health-related absenteeism, and making referrals to mental health and social service agencies. The program served 130 students last school year — half in elementary school and half in middle and high school. Eighty-eight percent of them took concrete steps to attend school more regularly, such as making a reentry plan or joining extracurricular activities.
“Many times, it’s a several-months process,” program director Bobby Blanchard-Lewis said, “because some of the kids we’re working with have missed lots and lots of school.”
One of the key tenets of the program is to refrain from shaming students and families for missing school and emphasizing that it’s not their responsibility alone to solve the problem. A softer touch makes families less defensive and more willing to be part of the solution, Blanchard-Lewis said.
“We want to have an educated citizenry,” she said. “It’s a community-wide benefit when kids go to school.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Rules of Reengagement | Chronic absenteeism in schools has soared. Getting students back takes teamwork.”
This article appears in The Reading Issue 2023.
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