By the second day of school at Benjamin Franklin Middle School, there were 14 students who missed both days.
Mike Klemp, student success advocate at the middle school, contacted each family to learn why their child had been absent. He got an answer from all but three.
“About 85% of the students that missed both days, we now know a reason why they weren’t here,” Klemp said.
Klemp is part of a team at Benjamin Franklin working to ensure students show up for class, taking a personal approach to combat absenteeism.
Identifying the problem
Benjamin Franklin followed national COVID-19 trends in rising chronic absenteeism. During the pandemic, students had become accustomed to online classes and even six years later that way of learning has stuck, according to Klemp.
“Kids were able to use technology and work from home and complete their work,” Klemp said.
In the 2024-25 school year, students had a collective 5,485 absences, according to data from Benjamin Franklin Middle School.
The middle school decided to make attendance improvement a focus and ensure students were coming in for learning ahead of the 2025-26 academic year.
READ: Bristol Township School District Turns to Its Community to Help Shape Educational Vision
The team tasked with improving attendance consisted of Klemp, along with school counselor Kasey Kenworthy, assistant principal Bob Kinney, principal Kevin Boles and home and school visitor Suzanne Skinner.
By the end of the 2025-26 school year, absences fell by 1,100 days, to 4,385.
“It’s not some magic potion we created,” Kinney said. “It’s being intentional about looking at attendance daily. It’s making contact with families.”
Keeping track of students
Every day, Klemp monitors attendance at the middle school, keeping track of a spreadsheet. When a student misses multiple days in a row, it is time to contact their guardian, either a phone call or email home.
Through this immediate outreach, the team can both build a backstory for each student and reassure families that the school is here to help their child, not punish them.
Pennsylvania law requires schools to send a school attendance improvement plan letter home if a student has received six unexcused absences.
When these letters get sent out, they contain administrative code, and to Kenworthy, can be harshly written. For this reason, it is important for the attendance team to establish a relationship with families ahead of anything that can seem punitive.
“It’s eliminating any sort of barrier to let the parent know what they need to do on their end, what we’re willing to do here at schools to support them, and making sure that everybody’s on the same page and really working together.” – School Counselor Kasey Kenworthy
“We’re trying to be proactive and have those conversations before those letters even go out,” Kenworthy said.
The guidance counselor explained that some parents are not even aware of the school’s attendance policy, that they can send in a doctor’s note to avoid some unexcused absences.
“It’s eliminating any sort of barrier to let the parent know what they need to do on their end, what we’re willing to do here at schools to support them, and making sure that everybody’s on the same page and really working together,” Kenworthy said.
Building relationships
Kinney acknowledged that Benjamin Franklin Middle School has not solved all their attendance problems. However, he thinks they are taking steps in the right direction.
Across the country, chronic absenteeism still has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, leaving schools with the ongoing challenge of incentivizing students to show up to the classroom.
In Detroit, the city’s school district saw success through rewards for perfect attendance: $200 gift cards.
The middle school has implemented a smaller-scale approach through the positive school behavior program — raffle tickets for showing up on-time to first period.
While this has “definitely helped” incentivize attendance, the biggest factor for curbing absences at the middle school has simply been building relationships with students.
READ: Truman High School Students Recognized for Their Academic Achievements
Klemp, Kenworthy and Kinney spend time building individual relationships with consistently absent students. By creating this rapport, they hope to create a comfortable environment where students can share why they have been missing from class.
On top of getting to know the children in the middle school, the team also goes a step further with reaching out to families. Learning more about each living situation informs how the approach that the team needs to take.
Sometimes, the school will be able to pick up students directly from their house to encourage attendance.
“We’re willing to kind of get very creative with them,” Kenworthy said.
Setting students on the right path
Good attendance habits matter beyond Benjamin Franklin Middle School.
As Bristol Township students graduate and move on to Harry S. Truman High School, Boles emphasized how important it is that they learn good habits at a younger age.
“There’s a vertical alignment because when you hit Truman High School as a ninth grader, if you set bad habits in middle school, right, you have bad habits in high school,” Boles said. “They have much different consequences.”
