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Union assistant principal outlines home‑visit strategy to curb chronic absenteeism
Summary
Assistant principal Miss Boyer described a '100 percent, one student at a time' effort that used home visits, focus groups and parent outreach to re‑enroll students; she cited district chronic absenteeism at 27% and said the high school rate was about 41%.
Miss Boyer, the high school’s assistant principal of student engagement, told the Union School Board she launched a targeted outreach program to reduce chronic absenteeism that relies on home visits, community outreach and individualized plans.
“We were at ground zero,” Miss Boyer said, describing district chronic absenteeism at about 27 percent and a high school rate near 41 percent with 268 non‑graduates from the class of 2025. She described bringing a partner (Norma) into the role to help with door‑to‑door contact, translation and family engagement and said the team tracked and re‑enrolled students who had been dropped for nonattendance.
The presentation recounted specific tactics: weekly home visits to find students at their doors, focus groups with students (high‑ and low‑performing) to learn what keeps them in school, meetings with parents to create re‑enrollment plans, and targeted interventions for students in in‑school placement (IP) for truancy. Miss Boyer said staff celebrated each student who crossed the finish line and that the outreach yielded families calling to check attendance and students returning to the building to complete coursework.
Miss Boyer also read anonymized student and parent comments collected during focus groups — examples included students saying they felt connected when involved in activities, and others reporting they ‘‘don’t see the value’’ of showing up every day. She described a recent home visit in which parents returned a senior who had dropped out to work; the school offered a timeline for re‑engagement and the student has attended every day since.
On next steps, Miss Boyer urged early intervention — starting before high school — and said the school is implementing child‑study teams to focus on at‑risk students. She said the district should consider additional pathways for the highest‑risk students and raised the idea (unresolved) of closing campus to study impacts on truancy and operations.
Board members praised the approach and asked whether common underlying factors had emerged. Miss Boyer told the board that, among the students she is working with, a common thread is a lack of perceived value in the education the district offers. She also acknowledged that the one‑at‑a‑time strategy will not quickly move district percentages and said additional investment would be required to scale results.
Miss Boyer concluded by thanking the board for creating the position and said she will continue reporting outcomes as the program develops.
