To combat absenteeism at this Minneapolis school, students are helping their peers get to class

Sophomore Juan Munguia makes a point of stopping to talk to kids he sees lingering in hallways between classes at Roosevelt High School in south Minneapolis.

He offers a pep talk of sorts, a one-to-one connection to say, here is someone who believes in you, who knows you can do your best and can get your grades up, if you’re in that room. And it is precisely the sort of advice Munguia needed when he was struggling to stay in school.

“Getting their trust is a big thing,” he said of his interactions with his fellow students.

Positive peer pressure is one way schools are trying to boost the dismal attendance numbers of recent years, and in turn lift achievement and graduation rates. There’s been much talk and a lot of ideas, and they’ve been in play since the start of the 2024-25 school year.

The new year began with the state’s annual release of student test scores showing that 1 in 4 students were chronically absent statewide — a 5% improvement but still a major issue. Lawmakers were meeting on the subject. Districts like Minneapolis began to pilot ways to keep kids engaged.

The 12 school systems venturing into that work represented a mix of urban, suburban and rural, and it has been hoped that their approaches — funded a year ago through a special legislative appropriation — could be replicated elsewhere. It is a three-year initiative, and next year, Minneapolis plans to take it up a notch.

But for now, the district is showcasing the work of its students — they were part of a panel at a recent daylong school attendance conference that included Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan — and while officials have yet to assemble data to show just how much the endeavor has paid off, the kids they’ve enlisted are believers.

“We think there’s been improvements with what we’ve done so far,” said Jessica Baruch, one of the 10 to 12 members of Roosevelt’s student-led attendance team. And it’s not just the personal connections they have forged with their peers, she said, but the research they have shared.

On Wednesday, Baruch joined other team members in presenting their findings to students in an English class. The data showed Black and Hispanic students at Roosevelt were most commonly absent. Regular attendance was essential, the team said, to building relationships, graduating and landing a good job.

Among the points that stood out: Roosevelt’s four-year graduation rate dropped from 73% in 2019 — prior to the onset of the COVID era — to 65% in 2023.

To those wondering about the importance of a diploma, the team provided separate lists of jobs, from those paying $16 an hour for employees who did not graduate from high school to $40 an hour for those who had.

Addie Wigg, a specialist with the dropout prevention program called Check and Connect, worked with the students on the classroom presentations. She consulted with them, too, on the idea of conducting “hall sweeps” during which adults pulled aside kids caught roaming the halls between classes.

“You’re the students: How do you think that might motivate other students?” Wigg recalled asking.

Said Baruch, “It would be helpful, just so you do it really constantly.”

The strategy was effective for about three weeks, Baruch said, but enforcement slid off and kids caught on to which periods the sweeps took place.

“Fifth hour was super,” Wigg said of the student roundups and deterrent effect on rule-breaking. But staffing eventually became an issue.

“It’s tricky,” Wigg said.

All the more reason for the students to step in and lend an ear to their peers.

At the state Capitol, legislation is advancing that would require every school in the state to report attendance in a uniform way and notify counties — or in some cases, the state — when students are dropped from school rolls after missing 15 days.

The notices ensure no students fall through the cracks and counties can step in to provide services, if needed.

But in Hennepin County, 9 of 10 Minneapolis families declined truancy-related services being offered in 2023-24, said Colleen Kaibel, director of student retention and recovery for Minneapolis Public Schools.

The district’s next big step, then, is to take on the challenge itself: “We want to own that,” Kaibel said. “These are our students and we want them here, and we want to be on the front end of that intervention.”

In 2025-26, the district will have three “student success navigators” in place to work with families with kids in multiple schools, and they’ll dig deep, she said, asking the questions that many schools ask.

“Why are there obstacles?” Kaibel said. “Are they in the building, in the community, in the home — one, two or all three of them? And how do we overcome them?"