Lorain City Schools reports small gains in attendance as officials outline strategies to cut chronic absenteeism

District staff told the Lorain City Schools Board of Education on Monday, Sept. 22, that the district has recorded modest improvement in attendance and a small decline in chronic absenteeism but missed one state attendance indicator by a narrow margin.

The update, delivered by Bill Olley and Misty D'Angelis, summarized state report-card data showing the district reduced its chronic-absence measure by 0.9 percentage points while the districtwide chronic-absence percentage decreased by 1.5 points. "We have seen our attendance rate gain steadily over the past several years," D'Angelis said, pointing the board to the district's state report-card data.

The figures matter because the state identifies chronic absenteeism as missing about 10 percent of school days. Board members and staff said that threshold equates to roughly 17 days in a 174-day school year and that long-term absences correlate with lower standardized-test performance.

Olley described specific efforts the district is using to bring students to class. "I wanted to highlight a few ways that we're actively working to improve attendance across the district," he said, describing the district's participation in a statewide "showing up to school every day" network, a districtwide "Titus attendance challenge" that recognizes top-performing schools weekly, and more asset-based phone calls to families that celebrate improvements as well as notify them of problems.

Staff said principals meet every Tuesday morning at 9:30 to review attendance data and to coordinate targeted follow-up, including home visits for students with repeated absences. The district also is using school-based clinics — specifically the clinic at Washington — to reduce medical-access barriers and reported expanding programs intended to make schools more engaging for students, including high-school activities and a student-created "Titan to Titan" podcast.

Transportation and logistics were a recurring theme in board questions. A transportation staff member identified as Tony told the board the department "do[es] have quite a few students that are currently waiting on space available" for buses and said the district delays placing students from the space-available list until it can be sure seats will not be needed by eligible riders. He added the district recently received five new buses, which he said should help reduce the waiting list.

Board members asked staff to analyze whether earlier bus-route reductions correlated with attendance declines; staff said they would produce the cost and routing information for the board. The board also asked for continuing updates on the impact of attendance strategies across elementary and secondary schools.

Board members and staff emphasized that the district is using multiple, personalized approaches because, they said, chronic absence generally results from many individual, household-level factors rather than a single cause. "We have to be resolved and those habits around what we do at night, what we do in the morning, how we build positive experiences — it matters," one administrator said during discussion.

The board did not take formal action on attendance during the meeting; the presenters framed the report as an informational update and said staff will continue to report progress to the board.

The board and staff listed next steps including a bus-routing analysis to be provided to board members and continued weekly data reviews and family outreach to sustain the initial gains.