“Visibility and learning go hand in hand.”
“When we’re not in class, we’re not learning.”
“Attendance predicts success.”
“Every school day counts.”
These messages encouraging student attendance can be found in two videos released by Santa Fe Public Schools in August—one filled with school principals from across the district, the other with student athletes from Santa Fe and Capital high schools. The district promotes its “Be Visible” attendance initiative that began in 2022 by lining school hallways with posters, and an Aug. 16 news bulletin on the SFPS website states it is making attendance “a key focus” for the district.
The district’s increased focus on attendance comes a few months after a June 14 Legislative Finance Committee report on chronic absenteeism in New Mexico, which states chronic absenteeism—defined as a student being absent for 10% or more of the school year—increased by 119% between 2019 and 2023, the highest in the nation.
SFPS Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer Crystal Ybarra, who oversees the district’s current attendance initiative, tells SFR that a “very minimal” amount of missed time in the classroom can greatly impact student achievement.
“You have one child who is thriving in the classroom, getting the curriculum on a day-to-day basis, and then you have the other child who might miss one day a week,” Ybarra says. “If you just have enough of those days, just that accumulation of missed time really hinders their learning, and also hinders their self-esteem. It’s not an easy place to start and then catch up from.”
According to Ybarra, real-time attendance data from the last school year showed slight improvement in attendance rates at SFPS, which increased by about 1% and 1.2% among pre-K through third graders and fourth through sixth graders, respectively. However, she notes attendance rates among high school students “stayed pretty darn flat.” Throughout this school year, Ybarra says, the district’s team of attendance coaches will be continuing to work toward further decreasing chronic absenteeism rates.
“We will be trying to really dig into what are the root causes that are really affecting some of those families, and how we might intervene at the school site,’” she explains. “We’re really hoping to build momentum this year.”
Chronic absenteeism appears to be decreasing statewide as well. According to data the Public Education Department released on Aug. 30, the chronic absenteeism rate in New Mexico dropped to 32.8% in the 2023-24 school year, a 6.4% decrease from the previous year.
Rep. G. Andrés Romero, D-Albuquerque, tells SFR the Legislative Education Study Committee intends to listen to school districts as they grapple with the issue of chronic absenteeism statewide.
“Part of what we’ve done with the [Legislative Finance Committee] report is talk about how absentee rates affect students,” Romero tells SFR. “They’re missing more and more of their education, and I think that’s what’s particularly alarming…especially with the issues that we’re having as a state within education. Part of what struck me in our general discussion, outside of the report, is also how different school districts are going about solutions for getting their students back in the classroom.”
One potential cause of New Mexico’s high rate of chronic absenteeism might be timing: The state only began measuring chronic absenteeism following the 2019 passage of the Attendance for Success Act, which directed the Public Education Department (PED) to measure attendance data and schools to address chronically absent students through intervention. Previously, New Mexico measured student attendance through the lens of truancy.
“The idea with going to chronic absenteeism [from truancy] was that the state and the government is saying they want to know how much in-class time the student is getting…but essentially, it was supposed to become less punitive,” Ybarra explains. “This moved to a four-tier intervention system where you’re supposed to start with universal efforts schoolwide and really move up the ladder based on the absences that students are accruing, and identify where the area of need is and intervene with those supports.”
Additionally, it meant the way schools track attendance data changed as well. Truancy was defined as a student having 10 or more unexcused absences, but chronic absenteeism specifically counts both excused and unexcused absences, with 10% of missed academic time overall being the benchmark for chronic absenteeism. However, the new system quickly ran into a hurdle: the COVID-19 pandemic, and the subsequent switch to online classes until the 2021-2022 school year.
Mo Charnot
After the bell rings, students at Santa Fe High School walk to their next class period.
Jessica Hathaway, a senior policy analyst with the Legislative Education Study Committee, tells SFR while the pandemic impacted chronic absenteeism rates nationally, New Mexico schools had to grapple with a global pandemic while still implementing new attendance-taking and tracking policies.
“As there’s been this recovery period, I think this is where we’re getting at that change in what school is and where kids learn that the pandemic definitely impacted and maybe accelerated. That’s what we’re still working with,” Hathaway says. “I think in that move back to school, there’s a missing component of talking through with kids why school moved from virtual to in person, and the importance of actually being in person.”
A facet of chronic absenteeism that Hathaway and other researchers from the Legislative Education Study Committee have been focusing on is the idea that more students are chronically absent due to a lack of motivation or engagement with school after shifting back to in-person schooling.
“The value of school is something that we have to continually reckon with in terms of making sure that that’s a space that is really serving their interests, their future goals and helping them to really grow and achieve any of those college, career, civic life goals that they have for themselves,” Hathaway says. “Schools have always had to respond to other demands in children’s lives, but given the pace of changes around them, that’s really accelerated right now.”
As an example, LESC Director Gwen Warniment notes that students who “are not having their needs met” in the classroom now have “more viable alternatives” to school.
“They see people who are successful—who aren’t necessarily needing school or needing to go to higher ed,” Warniment says.
In Santa Fe High senior Amelia Balwit’s view, many students choose to skip school because they view it as “an oppressive environment.”
“That is, I think, exacerbated by teachers having to be extremely strict with their policies on phone use, with their policies on attendance,” Balwit says. “I think that if it was a welcoming environment…these same students might have actually viewed school as a respite from home.”
From her perspective, she continues, “At the current state our school is, the immediate response to absence is punishment.”
While not making up the bulk of students who are chronically absent, the number of students who choose not to attend school due to a lack of motivation or connection to school is not insignificant.
In the LFC’s June report, attendance team members at New Mexico’s public school districts were surveyed on the various causes of student absences in their schools. The six most common reasons that attendance team members cited for student absences included illness (40%); parental decisions, such as vacations or switching to homeschooling (40%); a lack of interest or feeling disconnected from school (33%); a lack of motivation (22%); technology distractions (22%); and mental or behavioral health concerns (22%).
Not all students feel statewide changes to measuring chronic absenteeism work for their situations. Helen Banner, a senior at Santa Fe High School, was absent from about 79 class periods last year, mainly due to illness.
“This year, I’m gonna change, but last year…I get migraines, so I was absent a lot,” Banner explains. “Some days, it was because of migraines, but some days it wasn’t. I missed maybe two periods once a week—about four hours of school every single week.”
Banner says she often had difficulty getting absences excused for migraines, and also missed several days due to having COVID-19 and for Model UN school events, which she notes were excused absences. One day, when her father was enrolling her sister at the front office, he was informed Banner was three absences away from being required to go to truancy court.
“They did try to make a plan. They had this whole thing set up to try and fix it. I think that they handled it wrong,” Banner says. “They just sent out a couple letters and that’s it. They should have a meeting before you get to a point that’s so close to going to court. I feel like they should have pulled me out at least, like, maybe 50% of the way there—actually tell me instead of a letter.”
Banner adds that depending on a student’s home situation, they might not be aware of any letters their parents receive regarding absences. As an example, she notes that her parents are divorced and she and one of her parents might not know about a letter sent to the other parent’s address.
Both Banner and Balwit say they take issue with excused absences being counted toward chronic absenteeism, with Balwit adding she would prefer to see more positive incentives for student attendance.
“You can talk with people who are saying, ‘Well, we focus on trying to get them a plan. We wouldn’t punish them for being depressed.’ But what are you doing to stop it?” Balwit asks. “It’s all talking about not punishing, but are you doing anything else besides punishing? Besides not punishing, you’re not implementing incentives.”
Oscar Chavez, an attendance coach at SFPS, tells SFR every student case varies and that his approach to handling chronic absenteeism is to “not point the finger” at the students and families.
“When we are reaching out to these families, we’re actually trying to figure out exactly what is going on, what they need help with, trying to figure out if they need other services,” Chavez says. “Every family’s different, every case is different and that’s our job—what are these needs that families need in order to help them be successful and get their student engaged and back into the classroom?”
Those involved with Santa Fe County’s Teen Court Program, which often handles chronic absenteeism cases referred from SFPS or other agencies, say they aim to address the root causes of any issues students and their families face when handling chronic absenteeism to reach “not just temporary fixes, but steps toward lasting positive change.”
“We meet with the youth and the parent separately, and through that, we gather information to understand what’s contributing to the reason why they’re here,” says Chanelle Delgado, Teen Court’s youth services administrative program manager. “Each kid that comes through is going to have a completely different, tailored case plan that’s going to be specific to their needs, to their family’s needs. Whatever issues are contributing—transportation issues or financial issues, all of those are going to be met in one space.”
Delgado says throughout the 2023-2024 school year, the Teen Court program handled 188 chronic absenteeism cases, which Program Manager Joe Lozano says makes up the majority of the cases they handle, among others such as behavioral health issues, substance abuse and misdemeanors. Delgado also notes that oftentimes, chronic absenteeism cases they handle overlap with others.
“Through our interview process, they might be struggling with substance abuse, they might be struggling with poverty and with working a second job because they need to contribute to their family,” Delgado says. “There might be a whole bunch of things under the auspices of chronic absenteeism, but not solely the issue. It’s a very multifaceted issue.”
Tim Bedeaux, a senior policy analyst with the Legislative Education Study Committee, tells SFR that a difficult part of studying the issue of chronic absenteeism and creating policy around it is how varied the data is. Initially, he said, the LESC’s research team wanted to study the relationship between absenteeism and poverty. While the team did find a correlation between the two, he says it was only partial.
“Poverty explains about 20% of that; 80% has to do with everything else that’s going on in a student’s life,” Bedeaux says.
Other factors noted by Teen Court staff include conflicts at home, mental health challenges, bullying, substance use, academic struggles, disability, concerns about school safety and more. Because of the wide range of issues it covers through its services, “success looks very different” in Teen Court than it does at the school site, according to Delgado.
“If we have a kid coming in for absenteeism, but we find out they’re really struggling with suicidal ideation and self-harm, a win for us is interrupting that before we even address the chronic absenteeism, because that’s the priority,” Delgado says. “Maybe they haven’t returned back to school yet, but maybe they’re now engaged in the appropriate therapeutic interventions to address their life-threatening issues that they’re struggling with. We’re meeting the client where they’re at when they come in. If we don’t do that, we miss the whole boat, and absenteeism means nothing.”
Teen Court works to meet families’ needs through programs such as the county’s CONNECT program, which Health Services Division Director Jennifer Romero tells SFR leverages community resources to help individuals access services that can help with five basic needs: housing, utilities, transportation, safety and food.
Additionally, Teen Court plans on introducing new programs later this year primarily aimed at supporting youth struggling with behavioral health issues, which will include more consistent and regular Intensive Case Management Services for youth and families in need of support. Another is a family support services program that would provide educational resources to parents or caregivers of behaviorally-challenged youth to help the parents support their children.
Rep. Romero says the best way for teachers to individually address chronic absenteeism in the classroom is to communicate with students who miss class or are often late to class. He speaks from experience—when he isn’t serving in the Legislature, he teaches social studies classes at Atrisco Heritage Academy High School in Albuquerque.
“Whether students are tardy or missing class, it’s something that I always ask my students about, because as much as we try to advocate for students to advocate for themselves, for whatever reason, sometimes they may not always disclose what’s going on,” Romero explains. “I’m always following up with my students. I think most educators are trying to get at that root cause. What are they seeing as potential patterns in their community as to why students are absent and missing so much of their class time?”
He notes, however, that keeping track of all the students can take a lot of additional time out of a teacher’s day, adding that he had a day at school where about 10 students were missing from his classes—meaning 10 different families to contact and follow up with.
Mo Charnot
Joe Lozano, Teen Court’s program manager, works directly with students experiencing chronic absenteeism by setting up meetings with them and their families to determine underlying causes behind their absences.
Romero is most interested in boosting attendance through student engagement, saying he believes a recently-adopted law that changes graduation requirements and offers more class options will help drive student engagement. For example, he says, the new law states that while students are required to take four social studies classes, the fourth class is the students’ choice, with a wider range of options from sociology to New Mexico history.
“We really focused on what we’ve been hearing from students most. They want more classes like career technical education opportunities. They want to be able to get an industry certification. They want to know how the classes they take are relevant to what they may be doing later in life,” Romero says. “I think with the new graduation requirements, we make a lot of room for career technical education, we make a lot of room for student exploration in all of the different subjects—students are going to be able to pick a class that’s of interest to them.”
At Santa Fe Public Schools, interest in these programs is palpable among the student population. According to SFPS Public Information Officer Joe Abeyta, about 55% of students eligible for career and technical education programs are enrolled in one of those classes. Students at schools such as Early College Opportunities High School, for example, are particularly focused on getting a head start in industries including auto collision repair, construction and more.
At Santa Fe High, students SFR interviewed expressed similar wishes. Senior Landen Kessler says this year, the two classes that keep him motivated are his choir class and Advanced Placement research—a class in which students spend the year researching a topic of their choice and writing an academic paper on it.
“I care a lot about my learning, though. I’m going to AP US History every single day, and I could not give less of a crap about that class, because we don’t learn anything. It can be an AP class, but I’m not actually learning things,” Kessler says. “When I have AP Research—I’m more of a language-oriented person—I’m actually motivated to go because I’m learning new things, and I can apply that later in life.”
Banner, who says she plans on improving her attendance during her senior year, adds that at Santa Fe High, dual enrollment and AP classes tend to fill up quickly and that she feels the schools should put more focus on them as well as more engaging class content.
“If they want New Mexico, as a whole, to have a better education system, then they need to try and bring in more APs, honors classes or just classes that are actually interesting,” Banner says. “Being in one of the gen ed classes is the most awful thing ever. Nobody learns anything. Everybody’s talking on their phone because there’s literally nothing else to do. I really love my AP classes…I like teachers who don’t just talk off of Google Slides and go into detail about certain events that aren’t exactly part of the curriculum, but they’re super interesting.”
