From Compliance to Engagement: Richmond Public Schools' Journey to Reducing Absenteeism

At Richmond Public Schools, our motto is to “teach, lead, and serve with love.” Every day, our amazing teachers and staff go above and beyond for our students.  

But if students aren’t in school, they can’t learn. Period. The pandemic deeply destabilized the relationship between home and school, and like many districts nationwide, that was made evident by our attendance. By January of 2022, RPS’ chronic absenteeism rate hit 37 percent. We knew that we needed to deeply shift our mindset around attendance from one of compliance to one of engagement in order to bring families back. We settled on one goal, with a simple message: We love you here.  

In the past two years, this work has led to a steep decrease in our rates of chronic absenteeism; at the end of the 2023-24 school year, about 22 percent of our students were chronically absent. An impressive decrease of 15 percentage points. We’re leading our state in these reductions, and this year, we’re confident we’ll be below our pre-pandemic levels.  

A few things we learned along the way:   

Relationships matter: There are many root causes for why a student misses school: Their caregiver’s work schedule. Reliable housing or transportation. Access to mental health or social services. Schools can’t, however, help solve those challenges if families don’t trust them. So, our efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism are rooted in building trust. Key to our success is engaging families by meeting them where they already are – physically and in terms of their comfort with school personnel. Our team of family liaisons build relationships with families, who eventually share what they need, whether stable housing, social services, or even help with laundry. 

Follow the data: In Virginia, a student is chronically absent when they’ve missed ten percent — eighteen days — of the school year. Our school-based teams meet daily to analyze their student attendance data, and note trends early. We follow up with text- and in-person communication. Early on, we learned that caregivers were often surprised by how many days their students missed. By flagging that early, we’re able to get kids to school more regularly.  

Consistency is key: There’s nothing magical in our solution, but there is something unique in our approach – we’re incredibly consistent. Each and every school has a team of family liaisons, social workers, community partners, administrators, and office staff putting eyes on the attendance data within half an hour of the start of a school day. Then each and every family is called to check-in. Trust is built in the small moments like this. 

Many other factors have also undoubtedly fed into our success. For example, our school leaders and teachers build strong and welcoming cultures, and we’re focused on exciting and rigorous instruction. But the heart of our work is, quite simply, showing our kids each and every day that we love you here.