Students of WRVMS stand in front of their fence built at Metcalf Cemetery in Royalton. Photo by Caitlin Justice/White River Valley Herald This story by Caitlin Justice was first published in The White River Valley Herald on Aug. 27, 2026.After battling high absentee rates after the Covid-19 pand emic, schools in the White River Valley Supervisory Union are finding ways to keep kids in schools and build community connections. According to Michaela Martin, the SU’s multi-tiered system of support coordinator, working in the community can be just what chronically absent students need. In 2024, the WRVSU and a few other supervisory unions in the region received a grant through UVM called Everyday Counts to help bring these high absenteeism rates back down. Since implementing the Everyday Counts Grant, most schools in the WRVSU district now maintain a daily attendance of 90% or higher. Of the district’s 10 schools, three have not reached this threshold. Two of those are on the cusp of 90% daily attendance, while the high school’s absence rates still hovers around the 20% mark. Prior to the pandemic, WRVSU logged a chronic absenteeism rate of 10.51% over all of its schools. In 2022, chronic absenteeism doubled to 20.56%. This past year the supervisory union has been able to get these rates even lower than the pre-pandemic mark — 6.92% throughout WRVSU. Since the year-long grant ended, Martin has been helping to continue the work to address chronic absenteeism even without funding from the grant. “Anytime you do an initiative like this, you have to sustain it,” Martin said. According to Martin, the first step of tackling this attendance issue was identifying the barrier.  She said students have many different reasons for being absent from school, such as illness or transportation issues. For many students, however, it’s due to negative peer interactions or lack of connection at school. One way to address that situation is to help those students feel connected to their community. “You have to find what works for kids and what they are motivated to do,” Martin said. Heather Leavitt, one of the cemetery commissioners in Royalton, reached out to WRVHS for help building a fence for the cemetery. Martin took on the project and selected students from the middle school who struggle with truancy, hoping that seeing a physical result from their work would motivate them to come to school. “Once they saw the fence being developed and they could actually see their work, they were more eager to come to school because it was going to help someone else,” Martin said. “So a lot of times students just want to help and see their impact on their community.” Leavitt came out while they were building the fence and gave them cake to thank them for their help. “They saw that their work really mattered to someone else,” Martin said. Through the grant, WRVSU also connected with a local horse farm, giving students the opportunity to learn about the anatomy of horses and how to care for them. Martin said this motivated students to come to school because they loved the experience, and many students are interested in animals. “So it’s those kinds of things that if we’re struggling with students, in getting them to school, then how do we incentivize, motivate them to come and see it as something that’s worthwhile?” Martin said. READ MORE Since these projects, Martin has met with Leavitt to discuss other ways students can help their community. Martin wants to find a way to build an educational program where students are able to work on projects, such as the cemetery fence, while connecting history, geography, and language arts to these projects, which would allow students to receive class credit for their work. “That’s our belief system,” Martin said, “that community schools are where kids thrive and how do we create opportunities within their own community to not only help support, but also learn through their community instead of sitting in a class.” To be considered chronically absent, a student must be absent 10% of the school year, Martin said. According to national research, missing 10% of school days is tied to lower educational and health outcomes, lower graduation rates, and shorter life expectancy. She said it is important to catch chronic absenteeism early, before it becomes habitual and a harder problem to solve. Once kids become older and enter high school, redirecting them becomes a bigger challenge. Identifying barriers to attendance and setting up a plan for students to be successful has helped address the issue significantly in WRVSU, she said. “It’s just really about getting to the root cause of why they don’t want to come to school,” Martin said. This upcoming year, Martin said the goal is to begin focusing on students who are frequently tardy. She said if students habitually come to school an hour late every day, they are missing essential parts of their day. She wants to find ways to support these students in getting out of the house in the morning. “Our end goal is graduation,” she emphasized. “So how do we work together to make sure that that happens?” Read the story on VTDigger here: White River Valley Supervisory Union addresses chronic absenteeism through community connections. ...read more read less