A School's Strategy to Improve Attendance Starts At 7 a.m.

At P.S. 156 Waverly in Brownsville, Brooklyn, Principal Beverly Logan started the year thinking about how to tackle a 40 percent chronic absentee rate. That means that well over a third of her students missed at least 18 days of school the year before.  

So to improve absences and lateness, the school decided to offer students a chance to do things they loved. Specifically: taking part in either drum corps, the steel pan band, the dance team or basketball — all starting at 7 a.m.

"They have to feel success somewhere," said Principal Beverly Logan. "So to me, the arts and sports is a start."

She said that those activities could be what get students out of bed.

"If they’re laying there and they have a tummy ache and they have to decide whether they’re going to go or not go — if basketball is the one that making them say, 'I want to come to school,' then we’re going to have basketball," Logan said.

P.S. 156 serves some of the neediest students in the city: 15 percent of the school's approximately 750 students are in temporary housing. 

The school's 40 percent chronic absentee rate — the category for students missing 10 percent or more of the school year — is emblematic of a larger problem citywide, and nationally.

New York City education officials said that 44 percent of schools citywide have chronic absentee rates of 30 percent or higher.

The numbers can feel unforgiving, as schools are still largely judged according to test scores and other measures of student progress regardless of how much instruction a child misses. 

As one of the city's community schools, P.S. 156 receives extra funding and partners with a community group — in this case, the United Federation of Teachers — to work on reducing absenteeism. Along with opening early, the school provides after-school programs and on-site health appointments. The school created an "attendance team," which makes phone calls to absent students every morning, and performs home visits and conferences with parents about attendance.

The school also hired a consultant to help it imagine new ways of increasing attendance and rewarding improved attendance. For instance, this month Logan sent a group of students and their parents to see "Matilda" on Broadway.

The efforts are paying off: as of this week, city education officials said that P.S. 156's chronic absentee rate dropped by 7 percent. 

Overall, across all community schools, chronic absenteeism was down 4.5 percent as of March, said Chris Caruso, executive director of the Office of Community Schools. "One of the reasons why we're so excited to see chronic absenteeism get more attention is because average daily attendance rates can mask problems for individual students," he said. 

But when schools are able to quickly identify those students and create interventions to support them, "you can really see the needle move," said Caruso.

For her part, Logan said a key focus was making sure the children at her school had the chance to enjoy life.

“I want my kids to be kids," she said. "Unfortunately, they can’t rip and run up and down on their bikes in the neighborhood, because it’s kind of dangerous. So let’s provide that opportunity in the building.”

Logan said she was busy planning her early morning programs for next year. Students are even making requests.