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Nearly 50% of students at Haverhill High School, or 920 students missed 18 or more days of school this past year, a 6.2% increase in chronic absenteeism over the year before.
The Haverhill School Committee reviewed attendance data at its regular meeting Thursday. School Superintendent Margaret Marotta noted that while there are some bright spots at the elementary and middle school levels, the high school numbers remain stubbornly high.
“As we discussed in the middle of the year, while it is improving year over year, it is not where yet we want it to be—certainly not in all our schools particularly when we look at our older students,” Marotta said.
While absenteeism climbed at the high school, Dr. Albert B. Consentino School posted a 50% drop in the number of students who regularly missed school, moving from 24.5% in the 2023-2024 school year to 12.8% in the 2024-2025 school year. Likewise, Golden Hill School saw a drop from 22% to 13.86% and Bradford Elementary School decreased from 31.3% to 16%.
School Committee Vice Chair Richard J. Rosa asked whether there were any lessons learned from those three schools that could be tried at the high school.
“We have three schools that seem to have done an amazing job, almost a 50% cut in chronic absenteeism. So what are those three school doing that we should be doing everywhere in the district?” Rosa asked.
Lorna Marchant, the district’s supervisor of attendance, said the school administration, including the principal and guidance counselors at every school, focus on getting to know students and their families in an attempt to remove barriers keeping students away from school. She also said engaged students are the best ambassadors for helping other students recognize the value of education.
Marotta noted the state counts any student that misses 18 days as “chronically absent” so that a student that misses 18 days appears in the statistics along with a student that missed twice or more than that number of days.
Gateway Academy, the district’s alternative high school, had the worse absentee rate this past year at 77.7 %. The rate was down from 83.7% the year before. The school that showed the least change was the Walnut Square School which went from 20% last year to 18.64% this past year.
Marotta acknowledges, however, the district must do a better job figuring out why 920 Haverhill Hillies were on the chronic absent list. She said she will follow through with Rosa’s suggestion and have the principal of the three school with positive attendance numbers discuss their strategies in a leadership meeting with other school principals.
“I think while there has been some great movement in some of elementary schools and the middle schools, maybe next year it is time to concentrate on the high school,” Marotta said.