Jun 24, 2016 · by Yasmeen Khan
At P.S. 156 Waverly in Brownsville, Brooklyn, Principal Beverly Logan started the year thinking about how to tackle a 40 percent chronic absentee rate. That means that well over a third of her students missed at least 18 days of school the year before.
So to improve absences and lateness, the school decided to offer students a chance to do things they loved. Specifically: taking part in either drum corps, the steel pan band, the dance team or basketball — all starting at 7 a.m.
"They have to feel success somewhere," said Principal Beverly Logan. "So to me, the arts and sports is a start."
She said that those activities could be what get students out of bed.
"If they’re laying there and they have a tummy ache and they have to decide whether they’re going to go or not go — if basketball is the one that making them say, 'I want to come to school,' then we’re going to have basketball," Logan said.
P.S. 156 serves some of the neediest students in the city: 15 percent of the school's approximately 750 students are in temporary housing.
The school's overall attendance last year was 90 percent, slightly below the citywide average of 92 percent. And the school's 40 percent chronic absentee rate — the category for students missing 10 percent or more of the school year — is emblematic of a larger problem citywide, and nationally.
New York City education officials said that 44 percent of schools citywide have chronic absentee rates of 30 percent or higher.
The numbers can feel unforgiving, as schools are still largely judged according to test scores and other measures of student progress regardless of how much instruction a child misses.
As one of the city's community schools, P.S. 156 receives extra funding and support to work on reducing absenteeism. Along with opening early, the school provides after-school programs and on-site health appointments. The school created an "attendance team," which makes phone calls to absent students every morning, and performs home visits and conferences with parents about attendance.
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