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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