Douglas among lowest absenteeism rates in Nevada

Douglas County School District has the most students attending class behind Perishing County with a rate of 20.5 percent during the 2023-2024 school year.

Douglas County School District Executive Director Shannon Brown and Assistant Director of Education of Services Leslie Peters will present a chronic absenteeism report during the school board meeting scheduled for 4 p.m. Tuesday at Whittell High School.

Chronic absenteeism is one area in which the Douglas County School District is ahead of the state, only University School and Perishing County have lower rates than the 20.5 percent reported by the state.

According to the Nevada Department of Education, Nevada had a 25.9 percent chronic absenteeism rate, with its total enrollment of 479,578 students statewide, enrolled during the 2023-2024 school year. There are 4,931 students attending Douglas County school as of Sept. 17.

Chronic absenteeism is calculated by looking at the number of students who attended more than 91 days of school.

The state takes that number of students and determines who has missed 10 percent or more days of school, which makes up the Nevada Performance Framework.

The U.S. Department of Education released data showing that nationwide, chronic absences nearly doubled since the coronavirus, rising from 16 percent before the pandemic to nearly 30 percent by the 2021-2022 school year, meaning nearly 14.7 million students were chronically absent and roughly 6.5 million students were missing 10 percent or more days of school.

Reports released since the 2021- 2022 school year reveals that chronic absence remains high and has only decreased slightly over the years.

Some goals of the Douglas County School District to improve student attendance, include building relationships and create environments where students want to be, connecting with chronically absent students and their families about the importance of attending school, and providing incentives such as engaging games with the administration, brag tags, and exploration classes to get students excited about learning and increasing their desire to attend school.