There is a number that keeps me up at night. Not a test score or a budget figure, though those matter too. It is the number of students who were enrolled in our schools last September and have already missed so many days that their chances of academic success have been statistically compromised. In districts across my home state of New Jersey and across the country, that number is shockingly, unacceptably large. And yet the policy conversation around it remains stubbornly focused on the wrong solutions.

Shifting the conversation away from punitive measures requires identifying when and how to intervene most effectively. The summer months offer a strategic and critical window to re-engage students and families before the school year begins, when families are often more receptive.

This need for strategic intervention becomes urgent when considering the financial costs of inaction.

The Revenue Wound Will Not Heal

Most people outside of school administration don't fully understand how attendance and school funding are connected. In many states, the dollars a district receives are calculated based on Average Daily Attendance (ADA) or school enrollment. This means chronic absenteeism is not just an academic problem, it is also a budget problem, and it compounds itself in ways that are genuinely difficult to reverse.

When attendance or enrollment drops, revenue drops. When revenue drops, districts cut programs. When programs are cut, schools’ ability to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable students is compromised. Then, those students disengage further. Then, attendance drops again. And so on and so on.

This is not a hypothetical cycle. It is a reality facing hundreds of districts right now, made worse by the simultaneous expiration of federal relief funds that had been quietly papering over the cracks.

Research from Dr. Ivory Toldson of Concentric Educational Solutions, released earlier this year, quantifies the broader economic damage with precision that should alarm anyone who cares about public investment. His white paper, Redefining the Attendance Paradigm: A Systemic Analysis of Chronic Absenteeism, Economic Impacts, and Human-Centered Interventions, calculates that a chronically absent student generates approximately $5,630 in social costs through reduced earning potential and increased reliance on public support systems over a lifetime. A student who is suspended carries an estimated social burden of $27,260. An expulsion can cost society more than $70,000. These are not the costs of the absence itself. They are the costs of what we failed to do in response to it.

Rethinking Who We Think Is Absent

We have been trying to punish our way out of a poverty problem. It isn't working. The student we imagine when we talk about chronic absenteeism and the student who is actually chronically absent are often two very different people.

The imagined student is disengaged, indifferent, choosing video games over algebra. The actual student is frequently exhausted. She may be the oldest child in a household where a parent is ill, which means she is responsible for getting younger siblings fed and out the door before she can even think about her own way to school. He may be managing an untreated health condition because his family cannot afford consistent medical care. They may have moved three times since September and still haven't fully sorted out transportation to a building they barely feel they belong to.

Toldson's research documents more than 70 distinct barriers that contribute to chronic absenteeism, and very few of them have anything to do with motivation. Housing instability, food insecurity, unaddressed mental health needs, and unreliable transportation all appear on that list. So does something we rarely discuss openly: the growing number of students who have caregiving responsibilities that would overwhelm even the most capable and supported adults.

Understanding this should fundamentally change how we respond. A court referral does not help a student whose bus route was eliminated. A warning letter does not make a family that moved last month feel more at home. Instead, these warnings and referrals actively damage the relationship between schools and the families we most need to reach, at precisely the moment when trust is the only currency that matters.

Building the Conditions for Attendance

The schools and districts that are making real progress on chronic absenteeism share a common characteristic: they stopped asking how to make students come to school and started asking what was making it hard.

That shift sounds simple, but its implications are profound.

Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, when implemented with fidelity, allow schools to identify students showing early warning signs and intervene with targeted help before a pattern solidifies. Community school models operate on the recognition that a child who is hungry, sick, or frightened cannot learn, and that schools serving high-need populations must be equipped to address those realities directly rather than referring families elsewhere and hoping for the best. Relationship-based home visiting programs, where trained staff build genuine connections with families over time, have, according to the research literature, produced some of the most promising attendance outcomes.

Intentionally using this time for targeted, relationship-based outreach, such as through the Concentric 90-Day Summer Pilot Program, can effectively re-establish student engagement and inform a comprehensive full-year strategy before the new school year begins.

Transportation is an underrated piece of this puzzle. School leaders sometimes hesitate to claim it as their problem, but the logic is inescapable. A student who cannot reliably get to school is not going to benefit from any of our other interventions. Solving transportation is not a distraction from the academic mission. It is a precondition for it.

Data tools and early warning systems can help, particularly in larger districts where it is easy for a struggling student to go unnoticed until the situation is severe. But technology won’t solve the underlying issues keeping a child from school. The response to an early warning flag has to be a person, someone who knows the student and family well enough to understand what kind of help is actually needed and to deliver it in a way that feels like support.

What We Owe the Students in Those Chairs

Toldson's analysis includes a finding that deserves to be posted on the wall of every state legislature that sets education funding policy: increasing graduation rates by just three percentage points could produce billions of dollars in social and economic returns. Three percentage points! The return on investment for getting this right is extraordinary, and the cost of continuing to get it wrong is just as extraordinary, only we pay it invisibly, spread across a lifetime of reduced wages, higher social service utilization, and diminished civic participation.

I became an educator because I believe schools are where futures get built. I lead a district that I once attended as a student, and I carry that history with me every day. When I see a classroom with empty chairs, I do not see a compliance problem. I see a systems failure, one that we have the knowledge, the tools, and frankly the obligation to correct.

The question is not whether we can afford to invest in human-centered attendance solutions. The evidence is abundantly clear that we cannot afford not to. Every year we delay, we are not just losing revenue or test scores. We are losing students to futures that will be harder, narrower, and more isolated than they needed to be.

Those students deserve better than a text or a letter in the mail. They deserve schools that are willing to meet them where they are and build the bridge that gets them back.

About the author

Dr. Atiya Y. Perkins is superintendent of Linden Public Schools in New Jersey, where she oversees nearly 7,000 students across 13 buildings. A graduate of the district she now leads, Dr. Perkins brings more than two decades of experience to her work.