NYC Schools Will Change How They Handle Chronic Absence Due To Disabilities

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New York City’s Education Department is changing how it responds to students who are chronically absent due to school avoidance, according to an agreement officials signed last week with the legal team that brought a class-action lawsuit over the issue.

School avoidance, or school refusal as it’s sometimes called, is when students miss large stretches of school because of social or emotional disabilities, such as severe anxiety or depression.

The lawsuit, filed in October 2024 on behalf of four students with disabilities who stopped regularly attending school, claimed the nation’s largest school system had no policy or procedures to ensure students received the “free appropriate public education” they were entitled to under federal law.

The city spent more than a year hashing out an agreement with attorneys from the Legal Aid Society and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. The agreement signed Friday creates systemwide guidance and support, including a new mandate that every school across the five boroughs designate a school avoidance liaison.

The shift involves “amending policy, doubling down on training and creating awareness,” said Flavia Puello-Perdomo, deputy chancellor for family partnership and community support.

“If we’re able to intervene earlier and address the needs of students and really get to the root cause of why students are not coming to school, then we are going to be able to address chronic absenteeism much better,” Puello-Perdomo said. “What is affecting that student from coming in? Is this related to anxiety? Is this related to depression? Is this … simply refusing to come to school because oftentimes not coming to school is, as we know, signs that kids are struggling.”

The Education Department began working on the agreement with the lawyers before a judge ultimately dismissed the lawsuit, believing the claims for each plaintiff could be handled through individual due process hearings. The lawyers, however, planned to appeal because they were challenging a lack of a systemic policy. But they continued working with the department instead, seeing the city was approaching it in “good faith,” attorneys said.

Building Systemwide Consistency and Intervening Earlier

Researchers estimate between 1% and 15% of children exhibit school refusal. Parents and educators believe the problem was exacerbated after the pandemic forced schools to shift to remote learning. Education Department officials said they don’t collect specific data on how many chronically absent students are avoiding school because of social or emotional issues. Overall, roughly 33% of city students were chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year, and officials hope the shift in approach will help address school-avoidant students before their absences pile up.

“The moment that we see that student attendance is dipping down, or that students are showing any of these types of behaviors, then we can intervene earlier and ensure that students are remaining engaged with school,” Puello-Perdomo said.

When students don’t show up to class, they often fall behind academically, which can make returning to school harder. Without official guidance on how to respond to students struggling with school refusal, the city’s nearly 1,600 schools have responded unevenly, Chalkbeat previously reported. While some schools have developed strong partnerships with families to create plans that gradually bring children back to campus, others have blamed parents for their children’s attendance problems and refused to help students who weren’t in the building, several families told Chalkbeat.

Under the agreement, schools must designate a school avoidance liaison — a teacher, school administrator, or other pedagogue — by Oct. 31 each year and provide that staffer with annual two-hour training on behaviors that lead to school refusal. The liaisons, or other staff at the school, must provide families information about mental health programs and options such as special education evaluations or reevaluations.

The agreement requires the Education Department to create training materials for district and school staff, including liaisons, by Jan. 1, 2027. The materials must include guidance on talking with parents about school avoidance behaviors and resources like sample plans for bringing students back into the building gradually.

Schools should not expect students exhibiting school avoidance behavior to immediately have perfect attendance, Puello-Perdomo said. Schools instead will have to provide individualized plans to reintegrate the student, working closely with their families.

Experts say, for example, a student might first just enter the school lobby, then spend a morning with the guidance counselor before attending a favorite class. The student could gradually build toward a fuller return, with accommodations for easing back into class and catching up on missed work.

The goal, Puello-Perdomo said, is to “make it so that they can also experience a level of success.”

The Education Department also will post resources on its website to help parents address school avoidance behaviors.

Schools Shift From Blaming Parents to Addressing Root Causes

Susan Horwitz, supervising attorney for the Legal Aid Society’s Education Law Project who worked on the class-action suit, said the agreement will help schools look more closely at the reason kids aren’t showing up and shift the conversation from “What’s wrong with this parent? Why can’t they drag their kid into school?” to “Why is this happening?”

Most importantly, she added, “There will be consistency between schools in how they address school avoidance.”

The agreement tackles another major issue: Often, when students refuse to attend class, their schools say they can’t evaluate them for special education support since the child is not on campus. Now, schools will consider accommodating students at an Education Department-approved location closer to their home or approving an independent evaluation.

“So many times we hear from parents that when they say, ‘I can’t get my kid to go to school, she won’t get out of bed,’” Horwitz said. “The school says, ‘Well, we can’t do any evaluations because your kid’s not here.”

Jeffrey Metzler, a litigation partner and co-leader of Pillsbury’s education group, praised the Education Department for an agreement that is not only in the “the best interests of the kids, but that’s something that’s actually implementable.”

“I don’t think it’s realistic to expect even with training for every school liaison officer to become an expert in all of the potentially complicated issues that could result in school avoidance,” Metzler said. “But they know enough, and they’ll have the resources to escalate to people who do have that expertise.”

The Education Department must report to the legal team by July 31 whether each school in the system has designated a liaison and whether each liaison has completed the training.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

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