Mel Atkins says Attendance Works partnership cut chronic absenteeism by 9 percentage points in participating GRPS schools

Mel Atkins, a staff member with Grand Rapids Public Schools, told the finance committee that the district's work with Attendance Works has produced measurable improvements in a subset of schools and that the district plans to shift the program toward capacity-building so schools can sustain the work.

Atkins said, “it was 42.1 percent of our of our scholars were chronically absent,” describing the districtwide chronic absenteeism rate for the 2023-24 school year and explaining that absenteeism is defined as missing 10% of the school year. He reported that, among the roughly 12–13 schools the district worked with most intensively, there was a “9 percentage point reduction in chronic absenteeism.”

The district has contracted with Attendance Works since the 2021-22 school year, Atkins said, and credited a mix of strategies—team formation at the building level, regular biweekly attendance reviews, family support specialists and a move from punitive truancy responses to caring conversations—for the improvement at participating sites. He told the committee that Attendance Works would step back from direct implementation and focus on coaching district staff so building teams can carry the work going forward.

A committee member asked whether the 9-point change covered 12 or 13 schools and what years were being compared; Atkins clarified that the original cohort included 13 schools and that the comparison was last year to this year for that participating group. The committee did not take formal action on the attendance presentation; staff framed the next step as internal capacity building and further districtwide rollout planning.

The presentation highlights a localized improvement within a targeted group of schools; districtwide chronic absenteeism remains elevated and will be a focus of follow-up implementation and progress reporting.