School starts next week – but for too many students that doesn’t mean vacation days will be a thing of the past.

Dr. Kevin Whitaker, Jamestown Public School superintendent, told school board members recently that the district is making strides reducing rates of chronic absenteeism in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Attendance is typically between 90% and 91% in most city school district schools, though the district is still working to increase attendance at Jamestown High School.

More troubling is chronic absenteeism rates. The state Education Department defines chronic absenteeism as missing 10 percent of school days within one academic year for any reason, including excused absences, unexcused absences and suspensions. Missing 10% of school days means that a student is absent once every two weeks. In 2020, Jamestown Public Schools’ chronic absenteeism rate was at 27%, 57% in 2022 and 44% in 2024.

Those rates are far too high – though it’s worth noting that a child who has typical childhood sickness can be pretty close to being classified as chronically absent. While the district’s attendance push was a bit strong for parents who were anxiously counting absences to avoid district intervention while nursing sick children, it was good to see individual schools able to identify students who were actually sick and work with those parents while working overtime to get children absent for other reasons back into school.

If Jamestown is to improve its graduation rates, and more importantly graduate students who are ready for college or the workforce, reducing chronic absenteeism is key. Missing more than a handful of days during a school year can mean missed learning opportunities, lower test scores, social interaction and, for some students, regular meals.

Chronic absenteeism accumulated over the course of years can mean a child drops out of high school, making life more difficult for that child as an adult as jobs they are qualified to do become more and more scarce. It’s a cycle that affects business owners looking to hire employees, social services agencies trying to help those trapped in poverty and taxpayers who find themselves paying ever-increasing costs for safety net programs.

School starts next week. We hope classrooms are full. We all benefit if they are.