Strengthening Schools by Strengthening Families

SEVERE
CHRONIC ABSENCE 3
Students with
38 or more absences
Number Percent
TOTAL PERCENT OF STUDENTS
WITH CHRONIC AND SEVERE
CHRONIC ABSENCE 4
20,287 4.5 20.2
16,976 7.5 23.7
84,254 24.0 39.8
121,517 11.9
FOOTNOTES: 1. Numbers represent all students within this grade citywide. Grade PK excluded. Charter schools excluded. Districts 75 and 79 have been included
since their rates are detailed in the district chart on page 18.
2. National researchers define chronic absence as missing more than 10 percent of the school year. NYC has approximately 185 days in the school year.
3. National researchers define severe chronic absence as missing more than 20 percent of the school year.
4. Rounding accounts for tiny errors in the percent sums.
Cannon is going for the “home away from home” approach. He has set up the front lobby of the
grand old school building to look like a living room, with a couch, chairs and lamps. Upstairs, there
is another living room space which serves as a sort of neighborhood museum, with items like 8-track
players and LPs. The school security officers are unusually chatty and welcoming, encouraging the
school’s many elderly caregivers to stick around and spend some time at the school.
Breakfast is served all morning, so latecomers do not attend class hungry. There is stockroom of
uniforms, clothing, books, pencils and pens. “If you don’t have it, we give it to you,” says assistant
principal Colleen Burke. The school, across the street from a homeless shelter, is open all day, seven
days a week, with recreational and tutoring programs run by the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club, but
staffed by off-duty teachers and counselors who get paid by Kips Bay and use the time to build tighter
relationships with the kids. The doors don’t close until 10 p.m. On Sundays, Cannon comes back
to the school and runs his own program, this one for fathers over 40. “We play basketball from two
o’clock on Sundays until we drop—which is usually about 2:30,” he smiles.
This is possible to do on the school’s budget with the help of community groups like Kips Bay,
Cannon says. “Using CBOs, you can extend the day. We are being creative about it.” Still, the school
has a serious chronic attendance problem—32 percent of the children missed 20 days or more last
year. These are often children who are in tough family situations, he says. He works on his numbers by
making visits to the homeless shelters and building stronger relationships with foster care agencies. The
families who most frequently avoid the school will get a personal visit from the principal himself. “It
makes a difference,” Cannon says.
Luis Torres, principal of P.S. 55, whose population consists exclusively of children living in two
massive housing projects in Morrisania, has cobbled together his own version of a community school.
As a child growing up in the Soundview section of the Bronx, Torres witnessed his sister struggle to
keep up with school she missed day after day because of asthma. When he became principal in 2005,
Torres suspected that asthma was an important cause of his students’ attendance problems. Working
with Montefiore Medical Center, he expanded a school-clinic partnership program and added a
full-time outreach worker to assist families with health difficulties. He also developed new programs
to reach out to new African immigrant families whose children attended the school—including a
continued on page 48
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