Testimony Before the DC Council Committee of the Whole at the Public Hearing on Student Absenteeism & Discipline
By Tameria Lewis, Senior Director of Government Affairs, DC Charter School Alliance
Good morning, Chairman Mendelson and members of the Committee. My name is Tami Lewis, and I’ve been a Ward 5 resident for more than 25 years. I’m the Senior Director of Government Affairs at the DC Charter School Alliance, the local non-profit that advocates on behalf of public charter schools to ensure that every student can choose high-quality public schools that prepare them for lifelong success.
I want to start by emphasizing that our schools view chronic absenteeism and truancy as an enormous crisis. Missing valuable class time not only interferes with students’ own learning and academic, social, and emotional gains but also interrupts an educator’s ability to effectively instruct other students when they must devote considerable time to help returning students catch up. We also know chronically absent or truant students are more likely to drop out of school, which can have serious lifelong consequences. Additionally, a considerable body of research indicates that regularly missing school is a significant risk factor for neglect and abuse, particularly for young students.
Building the support systems students need to be successful takes a village. It requires a hands-on approach from the whole community to address chronic absenteeism and truancy and help prevent students from becoming truant in the first place. That means ensuring schools are places where every student feels they belong and has at least one adult on their side who can help them. It also means ensuring that truant students and their families receive the case management and services they need to help them get back on track and back in school.
This is why we applaud the Council and Mayor for prioritizing chronic absenteeism and truancy as a critical issue. We see some positive elements in each of the four proposed bills, but also some provisions that, while well-intentioned, may result in unintended consequences. I'm here today to share ways these policy recommendations can be improved to minimize involvement with the juvenile justice system while ensuring a true citywide approach to improving attendance.
Accountability
First, under the current system, the task of addressing chronic absenteeism and truancy falls primarily on the shoulders of schools. Much of the focus has been placed on ensuring schools are maintaining a consistent standard of compliance when tracking, reporting, and responding to chronic absenteeism and truancy cases. However, the agencies tasked with receiving and following up on those referrals have not been held to the same rigorous standards.
For example, under the current system, schools are required to track, assess, and intervene with families through Student Support Team meetings. If those efforts are unsuccessful, schools must complete referrals and submit them to the Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) or Court Social Services (CSS) for further family intervention after the student reaches the 10- or 15-day truancy threshold, depending on age. Those agencies are expected to investigate the student’s case, identify obstacles keeping them from attending school, and provide them with the support they need to get back on track. Yet in too many cases, no substantive action is taken.
A recent report showed that of the more than 11,000 referrals for educational neglect sent to CFSA over the last two school years, only 115 received any substantive response (1). That’s roughly only one substantial response taken for every 1,000 students referred. According to the agency, the vast majority of referrals did not rise to the level of educational neglect, even though many of the students referred are performing well below grade level academically. This represents a serious problem for schools, where the underlying root causes for a student’s absence can’t be resolved regardless of how well they comply with the referral policy. Furthermore, by the time a school has submitted a truancy referral, they’ve typically exhausted all other options to get the student back in class regularly. While the city also has several truancy intervention programs, as my colleague Nicole Travers notes in her testimony, they suffer from capacity limitations. Without the safety net the city can provide, schools have no other way of getting students and their families the support they need – whether it’s ensuring they have safe housing or ensuring their basic material needs are met – nor are they able to hold parents accountable when truancy persists after school level interventions have been exhausted.
Addressing issues of accountability first is essential to overcoming these challenges. To improve accountability, we have three recommendations.
First, we need to establish a transparent system that ensures agencies intervene quickly and effectively to support students and families referred for truancy while allowing stakeholders to assess the effectiveness of intervention programs. Similar to reporting required by Councilmember Allen’s proposal, we believe these mechanisms should include required reporting on:
The number of truancy referrals received from schools;
The number of those families contacted, assessed for, and connected with needed services;
The number of cases for which attendance improved;
The number of cases that were referred for additional enforcement actions by CFSA and/or OAG;
The number of educational neglect cases filed and the outcome; and
The number of “Child In Need of Supervision” cases filed and the outcome.
A good start would be a dashboard that notifies schools that a case has been received by CFSA, CSS, or DHS, allows for real-time communication between the agency and schools, and provides efficient case tracking and reporting. Collecting and reporting more data on referrals received and acted on would also allow for built-in evaluations of any changes made to referral procedures and truancy intervention programs and their effectiveness.
Second, as a city, we must get clear on a definition of what constitutes educational neglect; one that considers when students are not academically at the grade level they should be at. Without a clear definition, we risk raising a generation of children who are unprepared for successful futures and who learn that it’s okay not to send your kids to school. It’s on us to come together and agree that there’s a certain point when children are being neglected, which will impact their lives and potential in a negative way. We do not advocate for punitive responses to struggling families, but when families are provided with case management and services, yet truancy continues, we must be prepared to intercede.
Lastly, we recommend publishing data on chronic absenteeism and truancy rates more regularly. This would allow schools to compare their outcomes with similarly sized schools and engage in greater cross-collaboration and sharing of effective practices. These policies would go a long way in making our truancy response system much more effective and accountable.
Streamlining the Referral Process
As required by law, schools spend enormous amounts of time and effort intervening with students experiencing attendance issues and referring students with 10 or more unexcused absences to CFSA and CSS. We are concerned that the Mayor’s UPLIFT legislation would add additional layers of referrals, after 20 and 25 unexcused absences to the already required referrals. We believe this would present a challenge both to schools and receiving agencies that are already struggling to keep up with the current volume of referrals.
As the Council considers changes to the current referral process, referral procedures should be automated as much as possible to eliminate burdensome and duplicative referral and reporting requirements. Success comes from simplicity. We support Councilmember Parker’s proposal to leverage the existing OSSE attendance data systems to automate referrals and enhance information-sharing capabilities among schools and service agencies to the maximum extent possible.
Addressing Chronic Absenteeism and Truancy Must Be a Whole of Community Effort
Finally, we must ensure that we aren’t passing legislation that unnecessarily isolates, punishes, and pushes students out of schools and into the juvenile justice system. Every child, no matter what mistakes they’ve made, is redeemable. It’s on us – the adults – to build the support systems they need to be successful. While we must always prioritize school and community safety, we are concerned that some of the proposals in the Mayor’s UPLIFT legislation rely too heavily on disciplinary and juvenile justice solutions that may be counterproductive to our efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism.
Moving Forward
Ultimately, chronic absenteeism is a complex issue, and we know there is no simple or easy path to solving it. Addressing it requires a whole-of-city approach, and our schools are ready to do their part. We look forward to working with the Council and continuing our partnership with the city to address these challenges and to ensure that students are getting the support they need.
Thank you for your time and attention, and I welcome your questions.
Citations
The Washington Post. D.C. has a truancy problem. The solutions have to include the home. April 5, 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/05/dc-schools-truancy-juvenile-crime/
