Hopewell Schools Submit Corrective Plan After State Flags High Absenteeism Rate

HOPEWELL, NJ — Hopewell Valley Regional School District has been flagged by the state for chronic absenteeism at the high school level and has submitted a corrective plan, Superintendent Rosetta Treece told the Board of Education at its Monday meeting.

The district's New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum evaluation identified a chronic absenteeism rate of 11.5 percent at Hopewell Valley Central High School, just above the state's 10 percent threshold. The district-wide rate is 7.1 percent. The state defines chronic absenteeism as a student missing more than 10 percent of school days; districts are then graded on the share of students meeting that threshold across the total population.

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Treece said the issue is concentrated largely among 12th graders and is driven by several factors — including a reporting error the district says can be fixed quickly.

"A portion of this is how we report out on some students who are out on home instruction," Treece said. "We mark them absent — home instruction — we need to switch that and make them present. That was just a reporting glitch that is easily fixable and would have not had us on this corrective plan."

Beyond the data issue, Treece said the district has identified specific student populations with attendance challenges: students with disabilities experiencing mental health difficulties or school avoidance, Black and Latinx students and economically disadvantaged students.

"We need to figure out why these populations keep coming up, because we're seeing that in our test scores and other places," Treece said.

A board member noted the district only barely crossed the state threshold. "Ten percent is the mark, and we were at 11.5, so we just tipped over," the member said. "This is not a scenario where we're getting flagged for very high numbers — it's just that we were slightly over."

Another board member asked how the state calculates the metric. A district official explained that the state counts each student who has missed more than 10 percent of days individually and then measures that number against total enrollment. "It's not a lot of students for us that just tip us over the edge — just a few additional students this year," the official said.

The district has already submitted a corrective plan to the state. Treece said staff have been working on attendance intervention strategies for three years, including individualized attendance plans, 504 accommodations and parent outreach surveys. A follow-up parent survey is planned, and the issue will be brought before the Education Committee for further discussion.

"We are still having excellent attendance overall," Treece said, "but we do need to put in a corrective plan and fix this."

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