New Jersey's public schools are having an alarming problem with absenteeism.

A statewide performance report released this week showed a significant uptick in the number of kids missing school.

In fact, the rate of chronic absenteeism is worse than before the COVID 19 pandemic, when the number hovered around 10.6%.

Now, the most recent data, which is for the 2022 23 school year, puts that rate at 16.6%.

Education and child welfare reporter Hannah Gross is with me now to explain what's driving this change.

Hannah, so good to talk to you.

Very interesting numbers here.

What do we know about why these rates are higher?

Experts say you really have to look at the root causes of absenteeism, and that could be different in different school districts, different schools, or even on an individual level.

But some causes are people are staying home more often when they're sick following the pandemic.

Mental health has been a big factor, with students taking mental health days or not feeling well enough to go into the building.

There's a ton of things going on.

I'm wondering when you say mental health and sickness, is it affecting certain groups of kids more than others and kids in certain areas of the state more than others?

It's affecting students that belong to historically marginalized groups the most.

The students that are seeing the highest rates of absenteeism are students that are homeless at about 40%.

And there's also high rates among students who are in foster care.

How about other groups, typically marginalized groups?

How are they faring when it comes to getting to school and having consistent rates of being at school?

I mean, you could see that rates are higher for black students, Hispanic students, than for their white and Asian peers.

Also, economically disadvantaged students have higher rates.

Students with disabilities and English language learners.

So the districts have this data.

How are they addressing the problem?

So more than 70% of school districts have populations that have 10% or more of absentee students.

And so those districts have to come up with corrective action plans to address this issue with help from the county superintendent.

That's a state requirement that.

Yes, and so does the state also give them help?

Aside from the county superintendent, does the state offer any resources or money to put toward it?

Yes.

So to address this problem, the state actually released a new website recently that has all of the information in one place.

And they're going to be coming out with a toolkit and some like public relations materials that districts can use to drive up attendance rates.

What do we know about what's lost for students when they are chronically missing class?

I mean, if you're not in school, you're not going to be able to learn with the help of your teacher.

And if a student is not in school, their classmates then become less likely to go to school.

So it can have a big effect, not just on an individual student, but on their peers as well.

These are also, of course, the kids, the students who were affected most by remote learning, by the COVID.

And so there's at least ostensibly already a learning gap there potentially.

Yeah, it makes it much harder to come back from the learning loss if you're not in school.

Yeah, I mean, when you looked at these numbers, were parts of the state, say, in the south or in the north or areas where we typically see this.

Were they the ones that stood out bigger cities or more rural areas?

Yeah.

I mean, I would say that economic status is a big determinant of this.

Looking at Trenton, you have rates of like 40% or more of absentee students.

And then if you look at Millburn, that rate is a lot lower.

It's in the single digits.

So that's a big driver.

Millburn Of course, an area of a lot of affluent residents.

Hannah GROSS for us.

The report is online on our website.

Hannah, thanks so much.

Thanks Bri.