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Yonkers Public Schools is engaged in a campaign to reduce chronic absenteeism. The New York State Department of Education defines chronic absenteeism as students absent 10% or more instructional days. Research shows that missing 10 percent of the school year, or about 18 days in most districts, negatively affects a student’s academic performance.¹ That’s just two days a month, known as chronic absence. To improve student attendance, Yonkers Public Schools is implementing several efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism and ensure our students go to school every day.

As part of these efforts, YPS is highlighting our Attendance Heroes! Attendance Heroes are students who have never missed school. Yonkers Public Schools recognizes that sometimes students have to be absent due to illnesses and unforeseen circumstances. However, we encourage our families to have their children strive to be the “Attendance Heroes” of their school.

Poor attendance can influence whether children read proficiently by the end of third grade or be held back. When students improve their attendance rates, they improve their academic prospects and chances of graduating¹. Chronic absenteeism affects one in seven students nationwide. Please join us in our effort to ensure our children do not become one of these statistics but rather become Yonkers Public Schools Attendance Heroes!

¹Attendance Works 10 Facts About School Attendance

According to Attendance Works, the national non-profit that advocates policy and practice to improve school attendance:

1. Absenteeism in the first month of school can predict poor attendance throughout the school year. Half the students who miss 2-4 days in September go on to miss nearly a month of school.
2. Chronic absence appears to have doubled by the end of the 2021-22 school year. We estimate that it now affects nearly one out of three students (or 16 million vs. 8 million students in the 2018-19 school year).
3. Absenteeism and its ill effects start early.
4. Poor attendance can influence whether children read proficiently by the end of third grade or be held back.
5. By 6th grade, chronic absence becomes a leading indicator that a student will drop out of high school.
6. Research shows that missing 10 percent of school, or about 18 days in most school districts, negatively affects a student’s academic performance. That’s just two days a month and that’s known as chronic absence.
7. Students who live in communities with high levels of poverty are four times more likely to be chronically absent than others often for reasons beyond their control, such as unstable housing, unreliable transportation and a lack of access to health care.
8. When students improve their attendance rates, they improve their academic prospects and chances for graduating.
9. Attendance improves when schools engage students and parents in positive ways and when schools provide mentors for chronically absent students.
10. Most school districts and states don’t look at all the right data to improve school attendance. They track how many students show up every day and how many are skipping school without an excuse, but not how many are missing so many days in excused and unexcused absence that they are headed off track academically.

Students. Parents. Teachers. Administrators.