Advocates across Baltimore City and Maryland are quick to point out why kids chronically missing school is a problem. The hard part is coming up with a solution.

There’s been some discussion of chronic absenteeism in the past at City Hall and the Maryland State House, but elected leaders say there’s more work to be done, following a series of stories on the issue published by The Baltimore Sun.

“We have not been as engaged with our school system as we need to be,” said newly-inaugurated City Council President Zeke Cohen. “And I will tell you, as a former teacher and as a dad who’s sending my kids there, that is not something that I am going to tolerate.”

Thousands of Baltimore City students missed at least 60 days of school in the 2022-2023 school year, and nearly half missed at least 10% of school days. Absenteeism is also a problem statewide, and two state lawmakers told The Baltimore Sun they plan to introduce legislation in the coming session.

“Improving education is not simply measured by test scores. It’s ensuring that students are available to receive the education,” said Sen. Mary Washington, who serves as chair of the state Senate’s education subcommittee and represents Baltimore City and County. She said the legislature needs to examine the issue alongside the Maryland Board of Education.

“We have to address it,” she said.

City Council members, state lawmakers and education experts offer a variety of suggestions: Start good attendance habits early through universal pre-K; provide more tutoring; shift to later school start times; improve transportation; provide more behavioral health, career development, mentorship and virtual school options.

Some lawmakers are raising questions about funding, saying nonprofits should spend public grants more effectively and school funding should be tied to attendance rates. The funding discussion comes as Maryland Gov. Wes Moore this week proposed dialing back on portions of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future — the state’s landmark education legislation — passed in 2021 and expected to eventually cost around $4 billion a year, as the state grapples with projected budget deficits.

Chronic absenteeism declined 5% last year in Baltimore — to 49%.

“There’s always going to be chronic absenteeism,” said Councilman James Torrence, who represents West Baltimore. “The goal is to get it to a smaller number.”

Catching the problem early

Creating good attendance habits at an early age is an important factor, Cohen said.

“We have to start really early with our children in socializing and normalizing that going to school is not optional,” he said.

Expanding pre-K is a goal of state leaders as part of the Blueprint legislation. Right now, low-income families with 3- and 4-year-old children are eligible for free pre-K, with the goal of expanding later to subsidized pre-K for families making less than 600% of the federal poverty level, equivalent to $187,000 per year for a family of four.

Cohen wants to take that proposal a step further, providing every child in Baltimore with free pre-K starting at age 3, regardless of income. He said the city would play a role in the proposed expansion by using some city buildings as pre-K classrooms.

“We also have the power of the bully pulpit, in that we are working in direct relationship with the CEO and the school board,” he said.

Tutoring and questions on social promotion

City school students can be held back for only one year in elementary school and one year in middle school. In high school, they have to earn a sufficient number of credits to be passed to the next grade.

Data obtained by The Baltimore Sun last month shows upward of 95% of elementary, middle, and elementary school students are promoted to the next grade even if they’ve missed more than a third of the school year.

Social promotion paves a path toward failure instead of success, said Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute.

“I’m sympathetic with the plight of these students,” he said. But if there are no consequences for lack of achievement and results, “then you set up a machine that’s going to move more and more kids along without them learning.”

Cohen, who formerly worked as a teacher at two Baltimore public schools — George G. Kelson Elementary (now Sandtown Achievement Academy) and Curtis Bay Elementary/Middle School — said he remembers teaching eighth graders who struggled with reading.

“Somewhere along the line, one of their teachers starting early should have flagged it and provided additional support so that they could catch on again,” he said.

Asked whether social promotion policy should be changed, Cohen said it is a problem. With the caveat that some absent kids may be dealing with issues like pregnancy, personal loss, medical issues or completing work outside of school, it’s not helpful to promote kids who are not proficient in the subject matter, he said.

“If you’re reading below grade level, and then you’re not able to actively participate in the conversation, you have a sense that you’re failing. That is where and when we start to see children disengaged from school.”

More tutoring should be provided for kids who are falling behind, said Kalman Hettleman, a former member of the Baltimore City school board and the Maryland Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education.

“When students are a few years behind, they feel like dummies in the class and they have less motivation to go to school,” he said.

Virtual school options

Offering virtual options could be helpful to some students, said Republican Del. April Miller of Frederick County, including students with chronic illnesses, those who face bullying at school, or who prefer and thrive in the virtual learning environment.

Miller plans to propose a bill that would require virtual options for students who want them. Though there are students who don’t thrive in the virtual environment — as displayed during the COVID-19 pandemic — Miller noted there are some students who do well.

“It’s kind of cruel, right?” she said. “They provided that environment [during the pandemic] where these kids were thriving and learning … and then they took it away.”

Later school start times

Another bill Miller previously proposed and intends to propose in the upcoming session would push back school start times to no later than 8:30 a.m. for high school and 8 a.m. for middle school.

Her proposal was echoed in an Abell Foundation report from earlier this year proposes shifting middle and high school start times to no earlier than 8:30 a.m.

It’s not uncommon that a student would need an hour to get to school, using one to three buses, the report says. That means if a student has their first class at 7:30 a.m., they would need to wake up at 5:30 a.m. in order to get ready and arrive on time.

“We acknowledge that City Schools face resource constraints, but officials must recognize that investing in systems that allow for school start times that provide adolescents the opportunity for more optimal sleep are also investments in their academic success, not to mention their physical and mental health,” the report states.

In the second decade of life, a child’s internal clock shifts to a later bedtime, said Laura Sterni, director of the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Sleep Center and one of the editors of the report. That, in addition to external pressures, makes it harder to get up early, she said.

“If you’re a teenager, you can’t go to bed at 7:30 anymore,” Sterni said. “And then we get them up super early to get off to school, at a time where they should still be sleeping.”

Changing school start times can help with absenteeism, Sterni said, even if not entirely fix the problem.

Anne Arundel County shifted school start times to 9:15 a.m. for middle school and 8:30 a.m. for high school in the 2022-2023 school year.

Ways to fix transportation

Increasing the frequency of buses on school routes could help reduce absenteeism, said Jamal Turner, who mentors city school students through The Nolita Project.

“If a bus is full, they don’t stop. They just keep riding by,” he said. “And if [a student has] a problem with somebody in the neighborhood, and they got to be on that bus stop, they’re sitting ducks, especially if they missed the bus.”

Turner also suggested better lighting by bus stops to make them safer.

Most students at city schools in the 2023-2024 school year used public transportation or walked to get to school. Around 7%, or 5,188 students, most of whom were in elementary school, rode school buses, according to the Abell Foundation report.

The Maryland Transit Administration operates 185 school routes every school day, said Veronica Battisti, MTA’s senior director of communications and marketing. It’s not unusual for public school students in urban environments to use public transportation, she added.

Future careers

Some recommendations focus on trade schools and apprenticeships.

City schools should start talking with students earlier about future career programming, said Councilman Torrence, who works as an adjunct professor at the University of Baltimore.

“It is about making sure that kids know that they have options,” he said.

Cohen said there could also be more early college opportunities.

“Part of what motivates kids to show up at school is knowing that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, which is a family-sustaining wage, a career or a college opportunity,” the council president said.

Spending money more effectively

The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future proposes billions of dollars worth of education improvements but doesn’t directly address chronic absenteeism.

Blueprint advocates note that elements like “concentration of poverty” funds and behavioral health supports can help kids who frequently miss school. Some suggest even more funding is needed.

But Sen. Jill Carter, a Baltimore City Democrat, says it’s not about spending more money; it’s about better allocating the funds that are already being spent. In particular, nonprofits could do a better job of fixing problems like chronic absenteeism, she said.

“We throw a lot of money away to these nonprofits and get very little results from a lot of them,” Carter said. “I think we do need to hold our nonprofits more accountable than we do, and we need to make sure that all of the resources are not being held at the top or stagnated at the top, but trickling down to the people that are actually doing the work.”

Carter also said she’ll propose a bill this coming session that would add a section or unit within the state’s education department dedicated to addressing truancy.

There’s also concern about budget shortfalls as Maryland lawmakers head into the next legislative session.

“Your spending should represent your most urgent needs and your priorities, right?” said Washington, the education subcommittee chair, when asked about adding absenteeism reduction to the budget agenda. “And you make adjustments.”

Have a news tip? Contact Brooke Conrad at bconrad @baltsun.com, 443-682-2356 or @conrad_brooke on X.