NHCS sees drop in attendance this year, especially among high schoolers

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Attendance is a major concern for school officials each year, but the pandemic has complicated things so far in 2020. 

Attendance is down county-wide in New Hanover county. But student support services director Kristin Jackson says they’ve been giving students more leniency.

“We’ve seen some kids not show up for Zoom meetings, or for classes,” Jackson said. “But we’ve been real flexible with attendance.”

New Hanover County Schools have been dealing with a decrease in overall attendance since classes began online in August. However, Jackson says attendance numbers have been improving over the past few weeks and are slowly getting closer to normal.

“We have amazing attendance in elementary,” Jackson said. “With middle school, it goes down a little bit. High school is where we’re facing the most attendance issues. But that is typical for every school year.”

Although a drop in student class participation is normally cause for concern, Jackson believes the majority of absences are from logistics issues and not from students choosing not to attend.

“I’m sure there are some kids that are skipping class, but it’s hard to engage students,” Jackson added. “So we’re trying to approach it more from an absentee or truancy standpoint to more of a how can we get them engaged and back learning. Because it’s been a big transition for everybody.”

Jackson says she understands the problems students have been dealing with over the past two months, as well as the issues they continue to face.

“I think the biggest challenge, and mostly our teenagers are facing, is just the isolation,” Jackson said. “Being home all day, by themselves, trying to motivate themselves to go to class and get their work done. It’s really hard. It was hard for adults when they were working at home. So we shouldn’t expect anything different from our students.”