Truancy report calls for students to engage in policies, programs

A new report calls on school leaders to treat truancy as “feedback” for fixing systemic gaps instead of an individual student issue.

The Winnipeg School Division has released a document that includes seven recommendations based on an absenteeism summit.

The list suggests schools need to do a better job of ensuring every child has at least one trusted teacher, coach or another adult in the building, but multiple items require cross-sector collaboration.

“Absenteeism cannot be understood as an isolated issue within schools,” a summary of the inaugural student absenteeism summit said. “Instead, it reflects broader systemic realities including factors related to social determinants of health, transportation barriers, intergenerational trauma, and gaps in culturally safe education systems.”

Daniel Swaka called the April 23 summit, attended by teachers, government staffers and community organizations, “overdue.”

“I expect results. I expect something to come out of it, and I want to be part of the solution,” said the executive director of Peaceful Village, a non-profit with a mandate to promote educational equity and social justice.

Swaka oversees an after-school program that collaborates with city schools to organize tutoring, meals and wraparound support for newcomer students in grades 7 and up.

Since 2009, these sites have had success engaging students by setting up meetings with parents, maintaining diverse staff rosters that reflect the student population and offering free transportation to participants, he said.

Swaka was among more than 200 people who gathered in downtown Winnipeg for a day organized to both discuss barriers to student engagement and brainstorm solutions.

The University of Winnipeg, which trains more teacher candidates than any other post-secondary institute in the province, hosted the event. Students, civil servants and community leaders sat on panels. There was representation from End Homelessness Winnipeg, Bear Clan Patrol and Klinic Community Health, among other groups.

“There’s a major disconnect between schools and parents and that’s across the board, from kindergarten to Grade 12. Since COVID, it’s gotten a whole lot worse,” said Mary Burton, who oversees Zoongizi Ode (formerly Fearless R2W), an advocacy organization that helps families navigate education and social services.

Burton said making walking school buses universal and asking students and their families what they need would go a long way in improving engagement. A walking school bus is when a group of children walk to school together on a designated route, chaperoned by volunteers or parents.

Among the “opportunities and recommendations” listed in the new absenteeism summit report is a call to formalize mechanisms for students to engage in policy, school design and program development. The report identifies a need to bolster proactive outreach, including home visits and community engagement; increase Indigenous cultural programming; and address structural barriers.

Recommendation No. 6 calls for housing insecurity, transportation gaps and poverty to be recognized “as central drivers of absenteeism.”

Superintendent Matt Henderson has promised to create working groups to come up with concrete actions and make the summit an annual event.

Nearly 2,900 students in the Winnipeg School Division were flagged for “severe chronic absenteeism” in 2024-25. The group represented nine per cent of the population — the same as it did the previous year, which is when the province began regularly collecting data. Severe chronic absenteeism is defined as a kindergarten-to-Grade 8 student missing 20 per cent or more of instructional time during a reporting period. High schoolers earn the dubious distinction if they skip 20 classes in a mathematics or language arts course.

Daily absence rates in the inner-city division have hovered between six per cent and 19 per cent this year.

Education Minister Tracy Schmidt said her department will track and analyze attendance data to inform its policies.

“The reasons that kids don’t make it to school are diverse and they’re dynamic. There’s no one single solution,” Schmidt said.

She noted her cabinet colleagues inadvertently take action by developing more supportive housing and working to decolonize the child welfare system. The initiatives complement meal programs and free public transportation for students, which will be rolled out in Winnipeg in the fall, Schmidt said.

“There’s always more room for collaboration,” she said.

The report proposes education, health, housing and community services develop shared accountability and communication pathways.

Peaceful Village’s leader recalled being struck by how much everyone he met at the summit was motivated “to address the elephant in the room.”

Chronic absenteeism has long been a big problem, but momentum appears to be building to tackle it, Swaka said.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca