MCPS officials outline attendance action plan and link extracurriculars to improved attendance

Montgomery County Public Schools officials told the County Council’s Education and Culture Committee on Feb. 28 that a mix of data tools, extracurricular programming and well‑being teams are central to reducing chronic absenteeism.

Damon Monteleone, associate superintendent in MCPS’s Office of Well‑being Student Services, said the district is pursuing nonpunitive, data‑driven approaches that focus on school connectedness and targeted interventions. “We are not interested in being punitive in any way, but we are interested in being communicative,” Monteleone said.

Steve Neff, director of Pupil Personnel and Attendance Services, provided definitions and data: truancy is 20% or more unexcused absences, and chronic absenteeism is 10% or more of days enrolled (about 18 days in a school year). Neff described a newly developed chronic‑absenteeism dashboard that staff can use to monitor district, school and individual student trends in near real time and compare this year to last year.

Officials said the district recorded a roughly 3 percentage‑point improvement last school year but has seen recent reversals: K–5 attendance and several emergent multilingual learner cohorts worsened beginning around Jan. 20 and narrowed earlier gains. Monteleone and Neff linked part of the recent decline to community concerns after national immigration rhetoric and to weather‑related disruptions.

Shella Cherry, director of Student Leadership and Extracurriculars, described a new central office effort to roster extracurricular participation and a ‘‘certificate of student engagement’’ (bronze/silver/gold tiers) that provides baseline participation data. “The more they participate in those extracurricular activities, the higher their GPAs are,” Cherry said, and MCPS data show higher participation correlates with fewer days missed across demographic groups.

Jeff Sullivan, director of Systemwide Athletics, said athletics and intramurals create trusted‑adult relationships and school‑level accountability that can draw students into school. He noted a Board of Education revision allowing broader ninth‑grade athletic participation, which staff said has increased opportunities for students to connect.

Committee members asked whether extracurricular availability should become a formal metric in school improvement plans; MCPS staff said roster collection began only in the last two years but that extracurricular and climate data will be incorporated into SIP playbooks tied to state report card measures, where chronic absenteeism is already a key school‑quality metric.

Council members also raised a policy question about students returning from extended home and hospital teaching (HHT). Several members urged the Board to consider an exemption or a retrospective‑GPA approach so students who missed school for serious medical reasons are not automatically barred from extracurriculars; MCPS said academic credits earned during HHT remain part of the cumulative record but agreed to communicate the council’s request to the Board for consideration.

On interventions, MCPS described a tiered system that begins with teacher outreach (calls or emails), automated notifications and attendance letters, then escalates—after teacher consultation—to student‑well‑being teams that perform root‑cause analysis, convene counselors/social workers, conduct home visits and place students in attendance support groups when needed. Officials acknowledged capacity limits at large high schools and said teams prioritize students on the cusp of chronic absence and use aggregated data to design group interventions.

Committee members also asked MCPS to analyze illness‑related absences (for example, three or more consecutive days) and to look for ZIP‑code or building‑level correlations tied to housing or air‑quality issues. MCPS said it can produce such cross‑tabulations but has not routinely tracked long‑term illness absences to date.

The committee thanked presenters and adjourned. Members said they plan follow‑ups on safety responses at affected schools, the SIP playbook timeline, and the Board‑level consideration of eligibility policy for students returning from HHT.