Opening Statement of Councilmember Grosso

Committee on Education and Committee of the Whole

Joint Roundtable on Attendance and Truancy
May 10, 2018
Thank you, Chairman Mendelson, for holding this joint hearing with the Education Committee
and thank you to government witnesses for being here today to discuss the critical issues of
attendance and absenteeism.
This school year has been a grueling one for public education in the city and it is never good for
students, teachers, or school leadership when the news scandals are centered on education.
While it has been hard, it has been illuminating—helping us better know what we need to fix
and how to measure progress.
As we keep working in the District of Columbia to close the achievement gap, addressing the
high rate of absenteeism among our students must be part of our approach.
To make progress on this, multiple players and multiple agencies have to work together in a
meaningful way.
You have likely heard me say that guaranteeing the success of our students is not solely the job
of our schools, and that is particularly true for attendance—we need to leverage the entire
government and entire community to tackle it.
That is the point of the Every Day Counts Task Force, to bring together government, school,
and community leaders to look at the data, identify discreet problems, and find solutions.
The Task Force has helped us target resources, revise legislation, and plan across agencies.
Despite that progress, we got bad news for school year 16-17, as we tracked the data and saw
the numbers go in the wrong direction.
Both sectors saw increased unexcused absences and decreased in-seat attendance.
Disappointingly, we are seeing that same trend this year.
I think that part of this may be a result of improved emphasis on this issue and better data
collection—so now we are getting a more accurate understanding of the problem, and that
puts us in a better position to tackle it.
Undoubtedly contributing to these negative trends is the challenging time the education
sector has had this year, particularly for high school students at DCPS, who experienced a
change in enforcement of grading policies mid-year as a result of improper implementation of
those policies.

1
However, neither of those can fully explain the numbers we are seeing for the first half of the
year, as we see great variation across individual schools regardless of sectors or grade level
showing.
I do believe that two of the focus areas of the Committee on Education will have a profound
effect on attendance.
Improving school climates and reforming school discipline practices is one of them—how can
we simultaneously tell students to come to school and then send them home for days at a time
for minor infractions?
Closely related is the need to increase resources for behavioral health services connected to
schools—whether it is additional psychologists and social workers on school staff, greater
funding for community schools models, or more training for our educators to ensure that they
are using trauma-informed approaches.
Research from the National Survey of Children’s Health reinforces the importance of this,
revealing that 22% of D.C. students have had at least one adverse childhood experience, with
that rate more than doubling to 55% among students of color.
We must keep that at the forefront of our minds as we discuss this today.
Lastly, I will note that The Committee on Education is holding a third public oversight
roundtable on graduation rate accountability on June 13 at 10:00 am in room 412 for
government witnesses only, which will obviously touch on some of the same topics as today.
Nonetheless, there are a number of questions that I want to ask today to better understand
where we stand in addressing these problems.
###