Sliding off their backpacks as they come through the front door of the local Boys and Girls Club, a group of students grab pool cues. Outside, children laugh as they bat around a beach ball on the lawn.

But the upbeat mood belies the more serious reason that brings many of them here: They’re missing too much school. A short distance from southern California’s famous theme parks, the bright blue stucco building has become an extension of the Buena Park School District’s response to soaring absenteeism. The club is a place to make friends and for many, offers the only stability they’ve had during the pandemic.

“We are serving a need that the school hasn’t been able to fill,” said Luz Valenzuela-Trout, director of operations.

The district’s partnership with the club is an example of the extensive steps many educators nationally are taking to track down students missing school and reverse unprecedented levels of disengagement. But those efforts are rubbing up against the sheer scope of the problem. Chronic absenteeism has hit 40% in the nation’s two largest districts, New York City and Los Angeles, and is reaching dangerously high numbers in many districts in between.

“The pandemic radically changed norms about going to school,” said Emily Bailard, CEO of EveryDay Labs, a company that partners with school districts to improve attendance.

It has compounded issues that have always contributed to absenteeism, from lack of food at home to bullying in school, she said. Many teens began working or added more hours at their jobs to help out their families. Now educators “have to be able to address four or five things instead of one or two.”

In some districts, chronic absenteeism far exceeds the 10% a year that typically defines the problem. In March, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released data showing that over a million teachers — nearly half — had at least one student during the 2020-21 school year that never showed up for class.

Some educators say they haven’t seen any improvement since then.

Schools are under pressure to reduce chronic absenteeism because most states track it for federal accountability purposes. Those rates, however, offer little information about what schools are doing to improve attendance, according to Jing Liu, an education professor at the University of Maryland.

Read the full article about chronic absenteeism by Linda Jacobson at The 74.