DAYTON, Ohio — In every area evaluated, the state reported in its annual report card that Dayton Public Schools needed support in order to meet academic achievement standards.

Superintendent Superintendent Elizabeth Lolli told Spectrum News 1 in mid-September that they were seeing absence levels above 50% with many high school students skipping school. 

An attendance survey was sent out to Dayton Public Schools students looking at reasons they were absent.

When asked in the survey why they missed school, a majority of them said because they were sick.

“I can’t really address why people did what they did during that environment, but I know that many people were very, very fearful of bringing COVID home to their families or even catching it themselves,” said Lolli. 

Being sick may be what students say is the main reason, but Lolli believes that children skipping school to work in order to support their families is the real reason.

“I think many times, our students went out and also helped their families and found work — that might be fast food, might be some place that’s still open, (like) a gas station,” she said. “Something like that to try to help their family and support their family during that time.”

While students are admitting to it on surveys, Lolli said she’s learned of the issue in other ways.

“Those were things that we heard from counselors, things that we heard from teachers that kids were saying,” she said. 

Eonomic challenges are something Dayton is unfortunately familiar with. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that nearly 30% of the citizens of Dayton live in poverty and make on average a little more than $34,000 a year. Lolli said the school district reflects that. 

“We’re 100% free and reduced lunch because we’re something called a CEO District for Title One, so there are many children who live in poverty in the Dayton Public Schools,” she said. 

Although these socioeconomic factors play a huge part in students being absent. Truant officers are in place to help enforce kids going to  school. 

“Our truant officers actually do home visits and knock on doors and see where those children are,” she said. 

In 2017, Ohio HB 410 was put in place to decriminalize truancy, meaning students could no longer be prosecuted for missing schools. Students are considered truant after 30 consecutive hours of being absent. 

After a referral from the school, truant officers work with parents to help them with services like counseling, material help and case management to make sure kids are attending school. 

“If we bring students to them and we have the appropriate paperwork to show that the students hasn’t been in school and there’s no reason for the kid not to be in school, I think that would help a lot,” she said. 

But Lolli believes the Montgomery County Juvenile Court should do more to help. She also believes there should be more social services should be offered to families who are struggling.

“I think we need to have some services like that for families so that our families don’t have to depend so much on trying to work four or five jobs to just make ends meet,” she said. 

Although Lolli understands the needs of the families, she said it’s still important that children attend school.

“We have to make sure that they have an education and not continue to have chronic absenteeism and miss the opportunity to have an education and to graduate from high school and even move beyond,” she said. 

Lolli also said the district is hiring student success coaches that will work directly with high school students who are struggling with attendance and classwork.