Inside Detroit’s Efforts to Address One of the Biggest Obstacles to Better Schools: Sky-High Absenteeism
April 23, 2019
By: Erin Einhorn, Lori Higgins
Source: Chalkbeat
The little girl had missed 47 days of school before Amanda Bowman hopped into her white Jeep SUV to go find her.
Bowman, the attendance agent at Earhart Elementary-Middle School in Southwest Detroit, had been working with the third-grader’s family for weeks. She’d convened a meeting in early February with the family member who serves as the child’s guardian and gotten a promise that the girl would soon return to class.
But after a brief improvement, she disappeared again, missing another two weeks of school.
Bowman was right to worry. Children who miss that many school days can face devastating consequences as they fall behind in class.