For Maryland students in kindergarten through high school, the rate of chronic absenteeism is nearly 31%, educators and judges told Maryland lawmakers Thursday.
According to state education officials, students are chronically absent when they miss 10% or more of the school days while enrolled at that school.
Chronic absenteeism includes both lawful and unlawful absences.
“It’s alarming,” Maryland’s Interim State Superintendent Carey Wright told the members of the Judicial Proceedings Committee, showing data that illustrated the percentage of chronically absent students jumps to 36.5% among high schoolers.
“The numbers just astounded me,” Maryland State Sen. Christopher West told the panel of presenters, asking if the numbers were correct.
Students want to come to school, according to Wright, but only “if they feel welcomed.”
“They want to come to school if they’re feeling successful,” Wright said. “And they want to come to school if they feel like they belong.”
Cheryl Bost, a fourth and fifth grade teacher and the President of the Maryland State Education Association, told lawmakers that she is aware that absent students fall behind, and “those gaps just continue to grow.”
Bost then told the panel about a fourth-grade student who had attended 13 different schools before enrolling where she taught. He read at a kindergartner’s level, Bost said. After housing and transportation issues were addressed in a way that gave his family stability, though, he was able to catch up, according to Bost.
“When we have resources,” learning gaps can be avoided and lost ground regained, Bost said.
Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Dumais, a former Maryland State Delegate, told the committee what she’s seen during her time as a judge in juvenile court. Dumais said she was stunned by the rate of absenteeism among the young people that came before her.
“Kids don’t go to school,” Dumais said. “Particularly middle and high school.”
A colleague of Dumais’, Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Karla Smith, also addressed the panel.
“High school dropouts are three and a half times more likely than high school graduates to be arrested in their lifetime,” Smith said. Referring to the importance of school attendance, Smith said, “there is a direct correlation between getting that high school diploma and not ending up in our court system.”
West expressed concern about the ability of state government to fund the massive school reform plan known as the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future and tend to the issues being brought before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee.
“We’ve enacted this Blueprint, which is going to govern us, and it’s like all of our eggs are in that basket, and that basket’s an expensive basket,” West said. “We don’t have any more bandwidth to go outside the blueprint and spend any more money on education.”
The Chair of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, Sen. Will Smith, said he’d invited the panel of speakers to talk about the link between absenteeism and issues in the juvenile court system.
“It’s good for us to turn to a more proactive approach and understand things that are preventative,” Smith said.
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