Combatting tardiness: South Coast schools use data, relationships to increase student attendance

Not long after the morning bell rings at Dartmouth High School, automated calls go out to the parents of tardy students. In years past the school wouldn’t send out a “robocall” to parents until about 10:30 a.m. — and sometimes even later.

This year, robocalls are out to all parents by 8 a.m 

This rapid response is one part of the school’s strategy for ensuring students are in their seats and ready to learn when the bell rings. 

High schoolers show up to school late for many reasons. Some can’t resist an early-morning coffee stop while some stay awake too late on their phone and don’t wake up in time. Others struggle with serious mental health issues or complicated family lives that make timeliness difficult.

Area public schools have taken different approaches to solving the problem, from more efficient communication between administrators and families at Dartmouth High School to more advanced data tracking at Greater New Bedford Voc-Tech, to try to get students in their seats by the time the first bell rings. 

School leaders around the South Coast all trace today’s tardiness habits back to the pandemic. Absenteeism spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic and, for many schools, it still hasn’t returned to 2010s levels. (area-specific pandemic reason)

Reflecting on these changes, “it’s pretty clear that the pandemic created an isolation in the way that we interact with each other that had not happened before,” said Mike Watson, superintendent of Greater New Bedford Voc-Tech. 

“The important part of the work is to make sure we’re monitoring and engaging,” Watson said.

Many area schools stopped tracking tardies during the pandemic, often because of the difficulties managing remote classes. While attendance was tracked, most schools found it difficult to keep track of students logging into class late.

Tardiness data has become a crucial metric for teachers and principals, but varying definitions still means it’s not tracked statewide. However, tardiness across the South Coast has surged in recent years, according to records from local high schools.

Dartmouth Week’s sister paper Sippican Week collaborated with The New Bedford Light to understand how schools have used this data to address chronic absenteeism and tardiness since the pandemic.

Coming to school late sometimes is an early warning sign of a student’s disengagement, or maybe that they’re dealing with challenges outside of school. For classes in the early morning, tardiness can have the same effect on student learning as being absent. 

In Dartmouth, a team of school counselors, attendance officers, teachers, and administrators are meeting every week to identify student attendance trends as they’re happening.

“We’ve made a real sustained push [to avoid] sliding backwards,” said Dartmouth High’s Principal Ryan Shea. 

The school is treating an empty seat as an urgent problem, Shea said. Teachers and parents should communicate immediately when students aren’t in school. This one change has been instrumental to getting more students to school on time, according to Shea.

To make school feel like “a place that students want to be,” Shea said that faculty and staff are encouraged to send once-absent students and their families a quick email or phone call, saying, “I’m really proud of [the student] making it here all week.”

“Punitive measures are less effective than the relationship piece that lets our kids and families know that we care when the student is not in school,” said Dartmouth Superintendent June Saba-Maguire. 

Saba-Maguire said the positive, relationship-based interventions have been more effective than disciplinary interventions. Every week, councilors and social workers have dedicated time in their schedules to check in with students who have attendance gaps. But Dartmouth has reconfigured punishments too, including a “social suspension” from after-school sports or clubs. 

Meanwhile, vocational schools have seen some of the lowest rates of absenteeism and tardiness — but they’re still not immune.

“We saw a doubling of tardies that’s been working its way back to a pre-COVID level,” said Superintendent Michael Watson, of Greater New Bedford Voc-Tech. 

“There is a difference in the way we educate,” Watson said, and the hands-on skills in shop classes have resulted in overall lower rates of absenteeism and tardiness. Still, the surge compared to historical levels has led Watson and his teachers to view absenteeism data differently. 

Like other districts, they are using new data dashboards to identify trends sooner and communicate with parents more often. 

“It’s appropriate for everyone in the education of our young people to be considering” these recent attendance trends, Watson said. 

“We are working every day to try and be student-centered,” Watson said, “[making sure that] students are here and ready to learn and in front of an educator ready to engage them.” 

Some South Coast students said their peers who are often tardy are the ones who aren’t connected to the school. Councilors said strong friendships, relationships with teachers, and involvement in extracurricular activities motivated them to show up on time. They said their peers who come to school late, if at all, tend to lack those connections.

Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical High School senior Ally Webb said classmates who aren’t involved in a club or sport are more likely to be tardy. “The kids that are really invested in the school and their commitments often are the ones that show up just because they have a reason to be here,” Webb said. 

This examination of tardiness at schools serving Dartmouth students is part of a larger collaboration with the New Bedford Light. The full collaboration is a two-part online series that explores the challenges local schools face in tracking and reducing tardiness, and what solutions are addressing the problem. To read part one, click here and for part two click here.