As District schools and agencies struggle to tackle chronic absenteeism, the D.C. Council and the Executive Office of the Mayor are gearing up to have, between them, four comprehensive bills in circulation to address this issue.
This week, D.C. Council members Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) and Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) followed in At-Large D.C. Council member Robert White’s footsteps with the introduction of bills that address various facets of the District’s truancy problem, including family engagement, social services, interagency collaboration and public safety.
As Council members discuss proposed bills and the Mayor’s Office gears up to introduce legislation, some residents are concerned that lawmakers are not looking at the whole picture when working to tackle chronic absenteeism.
Parker’s Showing Up for Students Amendment Act
Parker said his bill, titled Showing Up for Students Amendment Act, follows conversations with the Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA).
“We heard from CFSA that many of the referrals they get, they aren’t investigating or supporting families because it doesn’t rise to the level of neglect that would allow them to intervene,” Parker told The Informer. “This bill makes clear for parents that there’s a red line for educational neglect. It would allow CFSA to take seriously the cases that need to be taken seriously.”
Parker’s bill defines educational neglect as the accumulation of 30 unexcused absences in a school year, without any “reasonable efforts to ensure or improve attendance.” It also requires CFSA to show that District agencies have provided legally required support to a child before designating them as in need of supervision.
The bill also includes a provision that expands the set of valid excuses for a student’s absence, including threats of violence, the serious illness of a family member, housing displacement, the District’s failure to provide legally required transportation, and family court proceedings.
It establishes a process by which families will receive summer home visits if a student accumulated more than 20 unexcused absences in a school year. Before reaching that threshold, students with at least seven absences within a 120-day period would be referred to the Department of Human Services to be connected to housing and other services.
If those efforts don’t curb truancy, students under the age of 13 would be referred to CFSA after 20 absences. Meanwhile, those who are over the age of 13 would go to the Office of the Attorney General after 25 absences.
The threshold currently stands at 10 days for students under 13 years old and 15 days for students older than 13 years old. Parker said the increase in time before referrals to CFSA and OAG would allow for DHS’ supports to take effect.
Not long after Parker announced the Showing Up for Students Amendment Act, grassroots activists took to social media to criticize what they described as the continuation of a trend where Black and brown people are criminalized and separated from their children.
Parker rebuffed that characterization.
“It’s not even about separation,” Parker said. “Some of CFSA’s work is around corrective action plans. Because of the [current] statute, they essentially can know a child is at home for 50 days, but as long as there’s no evidence of physical or sexual assault, they can’t intervene.”
Executive Office of the Mayor Works to Address Chronic Absenteeism
The most recent D.C. School Report Card showed a slight decline in chronic absenteeism from 48% to 43.6%. According to the report, more than half of the District’s Black students missed more than 10 instructional days during the 2022-2023 school year.
The report also showed more than half of pre-kindergarten students being chronically absent. More than 50% of economically disadvantaged students, foster children, housing-insecure students and students with disabilities also recorded absenteeism rates of above 50%.
Last week, a Bowser administration official told The Informer that D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) was gearing up to introduce legislation that addresses truancy and chronic absenteeism. By Monday, Bowser was still fleshing out details in preparation for an early April release, the administration official said.
On Tuesday, Allen expressed his frustration about truancy rates and what he called the Bowser administration’s lack of willingness to change the tide. While he told The Informer that an omnibus package combining elements of the truancy bills in circulation remains a possibility, he spoke out against provisions that threatened parents with jail time.
Those provisions, Allen said, are rumored to be in Bowser’s bill. What he instead suggested was more support for schools, especially those facing staff and resource reductions. “
The threat of jail time doesn’t accomplish anything for a mom,” Allen said. “Not every kid that’s missing school is going to commit crime.”
Allen’s Truancy Reduction Bill
If passed, Allen’s bill, titled The Chronic Absenteeism and Truancy Reduction Act, would further compel District schools with the highest truancy rates to meet and intervene with students who accumulate five unexcused absences within a marking period.
They would have to do so by referring them to CFSA or the OAG, the bill says.
Other provisions of the bill designate schools with rates of absenteeism above 20% as priority areas for the Safe Passage Safe Blocks program by the 2027-2028 school year. The bill would also add a new funding category to school budgets to address chronic absenteeism while allowing principals more latitude in the spending of at-risk dollars. District schools and the Department of Human Services would also have to submit status reports to one another about students’ attendance and participation in a diversion program.
The bill also funds the expansion of the Office of the Neighborhood Safety and Engagement’s Leadership Academy to five high schools with the highest rates of chronic absenteeism and their corresponding feeder middle schools.
“It’s about urgency and a multifaceted approach,” Allen said. “We can’t ask schools to do more with less money and less staff. Creating a new funding category based on absenteeism and truancy is the way to get money in our schools and put more control of that money on the school level.”
A Concerned Citizen Weighs In
For months, Jessica Giles has demanded an interagency response to chronic absenteeism. In her role as executive director of Education Reform Now DC, she continues to make a case that chronic absenteeism and low postsecondary enrollment are closely connected.
Giles extolled the D.C. Council’s recent efforts to address chronic absenteeism, telling The Informer that legislation must aim at removing systemic barriers, addressing root cause and executing evidence-based practices. She however remained concerned about how to ensure seamless implementation of bills amid talks of a budget crunch.
“At the end of the day, there’s no silver bullet,” Giles said. “Truancy is a symptom of issues affecting students’ lives. Funding is going to be critical. That’s something I’m looking out for in the budget. Attendance is at the center of it all.”
