Chronic absenteeism impacts Ashland County schools, students

ASHLAND — Being an assistant principal is kind of like being a unicorn, according to Ashley Pacholewski. 

Pacholewski would know. She comes from four generations of teachers, and works as Ashland Middle School’s assistant principal. 

Her job comes with a wide range of duties, from discipline, to literacy and curriculum, to working with school counselors and families. But one of the largest aspects of Pacholewski’s job is student attendance.

She works with families whose students struggle to come to school, for one reason or another. Those reasons are individual, Pacholewski said. Students might be sick, battling with their mental health or simply not have somebody who can drive them to the building. 

Pacholewski knows some students do all they can to get to school. She hears their stories. 

One student, she said, has missed a large number of hours. When she checked in with him about it, the student told her when he misses the bus and his scooter isn’t charged, he walks to school. The walk — a couple miles long — takes the student an hour, which means he sometimes shows up late. 

Pacholewski, along with teachers and counselors at Ashland Middle School, works to meet students where they’re at and to ensure they get to school. They develop plans and communicate with families about how to get their students to the building on time.

“It takes a village of people,” Pacholewski said. “It’s not just one person. Sometimes it’s formal responsibilities, and sometimes it’s just organic care for kids. But it’s not one person. It is a group effort.

“It is a partnership between school and home, it is a partnership between school and child.”

Still, when students hit a critical number of hours they’ve missed, it also falls to Pacholewski to intervene. 

Those interventions ramp up all the way from a letter home to parents, to taking students to juvenile court in the most dire situations.  

If students miss a critical number of hours, they can fall into a classification as “chronically absent.” That means they’ve missed 10% or more of the hours in a school year for any reason, according to the state.  

Studies show that for elementary-aged students, being chronically absent can hinder learning, resulting in struggles with reading that persist throughout one’s education. 

In the long term, it’s linked to higher dropout rates, adverse health outcomes and poverty in adulthood. It can even mean a higher likelihood of interacting with the criminal justice system.

The issue of chronic absenteeism isn’t new. But in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, rates of chronic absenteeism have risen dramatically nationally, statewide and locally.

The state of Ohio

Ohio has been addressing attendance issues since Dec. 2016, when it passed House Bill 410 through the state legislature.

That legislation aimed to prevent student absence, offering a slew of actions districts should take to combat absenteeism. Those actions included parent notification, counseling, mediation and more.

But even with that bill in place, when students returned to the classroom full time after COVID in the 2021-2022 school year, the state’s chronic absenteeism rate rose to 30.2%. That’s a nearly 14-point jump from the last pre-pandemic year, when the state’s average stood at 16.7%. 

I think COVID did a number on us. A lot of us got back to school and got back to our routines, but some lasting impacts from COVID changed our mind for a lot of things.

Ashley Pacholewski, Assistant principal at Ashland Middle School

It fell a few points in 2022-2023, to 26.8%. Still, the issue is prominent enough that the state took action. An Attendance Task Force made up of superintendents, teachers, legislators and more convened from May to October of 2023.

In October, that task force released a list of recommendations to help schools combat chronic absenteeism rates. 

Those solutions ranged from building awareness of chronic absenteeism and the importance of attendance, to fostering engagement within districts to address local challenges.

Ashland County’s rates

Ashland County isn’t untouched by the national and statewide challenges of chronic absenteeism. For the 2022-2023 school year — the most recent data available from the state — all the county’s public districts fell below the statewide chronic absenteeism rate. 

Mapleton, Hillsdale and Loudonville-Perrysville all saw rises during and post-COVID, but maintained relatively low rates of chronic absenteeism overall. Those districts’ rates fall between 10 to 16 points below the statewide average. 

But post-COVID, Ashland City Schools’ rate of chronic absenteeism topped the statewide rate. It capped out at 30.9% during the 2021-2022 school year. 

Secretaries and administrators across the district said the return from COVID-19 was a struggle. 

“I think COVID did a number on us,” Pacholewski said. “A lot of us got back to school and got back to our routines, but some lasting impacts from COVID changed our mindset for a lot of things.

“I think parents had to take on an unreasonable amount of responsibilities, and I think we’re seeing the after effects of that.”

Many administrators and secretaries across Ashland City Schools said they think online schooling during that time was a part of the puzzle.

If students could learn online at home during COVID, why did they need to be back in the building again?

Still, school personnel argued it remains important for students to attend school. 

Tyanne Brophy, an attendance counselor who serves Ashland City Schools three days a week, argued students learn more than just math, reading and writing when they come to school. 

“You’re learning life skills,” Brophy said. “You’re [learning how to] understand different people’s perspectives.”

Turning it around

While Ashland City Schools struggled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the district made a turnaround between the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 academic years. 

Ashland City Schools cut its chronic absenteeism rate nearly in half during that year. It dropped from 30.9% to 17.3% — nearly a 14-point difference. 

That drop across the district was mirrored at each building. Chronic absenteeism rates fell by anywhere from 8% to 15% in the district’s respective schools. 

Of course, the issue of chronic absenteeism in the district isn’t fully solved. Pockets of students across the district are still missing significant amounts of school. 

Still, the drop signaled to the district it’s doing something right in its fight to combat it. 

In Pacholewski’s view, it comes down to something simple: Ashland City Schools caring about its students. They say it all the time, she says, but it’s the actions that really count. 

“There’s so much that happens over the course of a school day that I can’t even capture,” Pacholewski said. “It’s teachers that’ll do laundry in between classes so a kid feels what it’s like to have a really warm, clean sweatshirt, and just lights up.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part one of a three-part Solutions Journalism series, “Learning Lost,” focused on a nearly 14-point drop in Ashland City Schools’ chronic absenteeism rate between the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school years. Part two will run on March 19, and will look at an attendance tracking program making a difference.