Summer isn’t a break — for the families school districts most need to engage with, summer is the time to act, writes Piper Bognar, Superintendent of the Van Dyke Public Schools in Warren, Michigan, in an eSchool News essay
The reason is chronic absenteeism. It is an issue that doesn’t disappear when the school year ends. In the U.S., 23 percent of all students (nearly one-fourth) miss enough school to fall significantly behind.
Van Dyke Public Schools has experience working alongside families experiencing real hardships including housing instability, health issues, and transportation obstacles. Some of our students must assume caregiver roles for younger siblings due to family circumstances. These are explanations for absenteeism, not justifications.
Building relationships with students and families helps address chronic absenteeism. And relationships have a season. That season is summer. The pressures of the school year diminish a bit and families who have felt judged or pursued by institutional systems they don’t trust enough to allow them to enter their homes become more receptive a meaningful dialogue.
When my team connects with families during the summer break with a sincere individual inquiring about their child’s needs, the defensiveness that develops throughout a school year is lessened. We aren’t contacting them because something went wrong. We are contacting them because we care about what lies ahead.
Root-cause analysis of chronic absenteeism consistently demonstrates that families who disengage from school are not indifferent to their child’s education, but they are overwhelmed and exhausted. Negative experiences cause them to believe they cannot rely on institutional systems for support. Institutional trust does not occur during a quick hallway discussion on back-to-school night. Trust must be established before that.
The positive outcomes resulting from our efforts support this conclusion: Our efforts to reconnect with families and restore trust contributed to chronic absenteeism declining at Lincoln High School (from 64% in 2023-2024 to 58% in 2024-2025) and Lincoln Middle School (from 59% in 2023-2024 to 50% in 2024-2025).
Van Dyke has committed resources for engaging students and families during summer months. This is central component of our attendance strategy. Supported by Concentric Educational Solutions, our outreach to chronically absent students and their families during summer months is a human-centered approach necessary for achieving success.
Our outreach to chronically absent students and their families over summer months can involve visiting residences, making phone calls that are more personable than administrative, and listening before speaking. We are communicating to every family we contact: You are an important part of our community and we want you to return to school. This message lands differently in July than it does in October.
Maintaining the student connection to school is extensive, continuous, and inherently human-centered. Summer gives us an opportunity we seldom have during the school year: the chance to prevent problems from arising rather than chasing after problems once they arise.
That opportunity is too valuable to squander.
eSchool News
