How a Connecticut School Slashed Its Chronic Absenteeism Rate

Norwalk, Connecticut — The solution to one of the most persistent problems in education today may lie in the work occurring in a small breakroom deep inside Ponus Ridge STEAM Academy. In the room, five school officials sit around a little table, laptops open, running swiftly through a long list of middle school students who have major attendance problems. 

“Out with the flu for a week.”

“He’s moving to Texas.” 

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“When we said we would show up at her house, she started coming.”

 “I don’t know where to go with him. When all his teachers are here, he’s OK, but he takes advantage of subs.”

Assistant Principal Evan Byron runs the meeting; grade-level counselors go through every student in danger of being chronically absent, missing 10% of the school year. On this day, Jan. 13, near the halfway mark of the school year, the team ran through 25 seventh-grade students in about 10 minutes. 

While the pace is rapid, it can be detailed, as they observed one student’s absenteeism problem stemmed from the days she had French class. Since the class isn’t required, they hope to resolve this issue by moving her to another subject. 

Their data is up-to-the-minute: They know whether all the students notified yesterday are in the building today; they know how parents are likely to react to repeated warnings; and they can even take an educated guess that the upcoming travel basketball season might improve one student’s attendance. 

The school follows a strict regimen about absences: an email home if a student misses two days in a row, a letter home once a student misses six days, another letter at 12 days, and an email home each day a student is absent if they have missed more than 10 days. School officials can also schedule home visits, where they can show parents a student’s academic and attendance records while extolling the wide variety of classes and extra curriculars that may entice a student into attending. 

“It’s effective,” Byron said. “A lot of students magically show up” after these correspondences. For any student who reaches the level of chronically absent –18 absences out of 180 school days – the school sends a referral to the state Department of Children and Families. 

“That’s an absolute last resort,” said principal Damon Lewis. 

Chronic absenteeism has spiked in schools nationwide since 2020’s pandemic. Before then, the number of students who missed at least 10% of school was about three of every 20 students, or 15%, said Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. Data from 39 states and Washington, D.C., showed that number nearly doubled to 28.6% at its height, he said, although it has dropped back slightly under 23% in the last year. Malkus tracks school attendance nationwide at the Return 2 Learn website.

“The permission structure of when it’s OK to miss school loosened up” after schools were closed for the COVID-19 virus, Malkus said. If the new normal of students chronically absent is above 20%, “that’s not good.” 

At Ponus, a middle school in a small city north of New York City, Lewis and his team were not immune to this trend. The 637-student school’s chronically absent rate spiked to 31% after the pandemic; Lewis and his administrators were able to slice that number to under 10% in just one year. 

A lot of what Ponus officials do is the hard work of paying close attention to students and their patterns. Lewis mentions attendance in every weekly email he sends to all parents; homeroom teachers keep close tabs on their students; and the biweekly attendance meetings aim to make sure no student slips between the cracks. 

During the January meeting, seventh grade counselor Kaitlin Douglas points out a student who nearly did just that. “She wasn’t missing consecutive days, so she was flying under our radar,” Douglas said, noting that the student popped up on her list because of the total days missed. 

“It’s an all-hands-on-deck initiative,” Principal Lewis said. “We drew a line in the sand and said, ‘We’re not doing this anymore.’ ”

While all this effort is put into attendance, Lewis and his team have revamped the school to make children want to attend. “We try to entice the student back to school” through high-interest courses such as robotics, 3D printing, music technology, he said. The school has also beefed up its afterschool clubs; it currently offers 17 options ranging from weightlifting and rock band to crochet and jewelry making. 

Norwalk has become a choice district, meaning any student inside the city’s 23 square miles can attend any of the city’s five middle schools. (The Concord Magnet school is a K-8 school on the same campus as Ponus Ridge.) For the first time, the school has a waiting list this year, Lewis said proudly. 

Francesco and Brayden Christopher – who enjoy pointing out that they are in grades 6-7, hand motion included – attend the school from across town because their parents like the teachers and the people. “My dad texts with [principal Lewis] every day,” Brayden said. 

Eighth grader Olivia Hempstead agreed that her family was impressed with the frequent communication when her older brother attended the school. She said she has a “true relationship” with principal Lewis and that he cares about students without trying to be their friend. “I’ve never heard him yell,” she added. 

Lewis, who has been principal at Ponus Ridge for 11 years, works to include the entire community in the school. He features Walk-Through Wednesdays where anyone can visit the school once a month, a Hispanic parent group and an in-school food pantry for families. When ICE raids began in the city, he brought immigration attorneys to the school for a night-time event so parents could learn their rights. “I want to meet people where they are, and they are hungry for resources,” he said. 

Three of every four Ponus Ridge students are eligible for free or reduced lunch and 90% are students of color. 

Lewis was named the Middle Level National Principal of the Year by the National Association of Secondary School Principals this year. Lewis “demonstrates how visionary leadership can transform school communities,” said association CEO Ronn Nozoe. 

The attendance increase has had other benefits for Ponus Ridge students. Even though the school’s overall accountability index from the state is a mediocre 61.9 on a scale to 100, Lewis said his students’ Preliminary SAT scores have outpaced the district, the state and the nation. The school also outperforms its district and the state for ninth grade students on track to graduation. This measure looks at former Ponus Ridge students after their first year of high school; 91.5% are on track to graduate within four years, slightly ahead of the city’s 89.3%. 

But the area Ponus Ridge really stands out in is attendance. Of the city’s 21 schools, Ponus has by far the lowest rate of students chronically absent, with 9.1% in 2024-25 compared to Norwalk’s overall 17.2% rate. AEI’s Malkus points out that the increase in student absences has consequences even for students who aren’t chronically absentAchievement on standardized tests is pretty linear, he said, meaning the more days students miss, the worse they tend to achieve. “The long-term challenge is to change people’s behavior,” he added. 

Lewis and other administrators understand how difficult that can be. Sometimes parents complain about all the school’s correspondence, but the school remains committed to following its plan. “We’re not afraid to put our heads in the lion’s mouth,” Lewis said about dealing with criticism. 

“When people say to me, ‘Stop sending emails,’ I say, ‘Send your son to school and I will,’ ” Lewis said. “I try to tell them, this is bigger than Ponus. This is a life lesson.”

But not all parents resist the emails, the principal added. In one recent case, a father had to leave home for work before his child left for school. When he saw an email mid-morning that his son wasn’t at school, the father called the school and said he was leaving work to go home. “He’ll be there within the hour,” he told Lewis.