NC schools are missing 12,000 students since the pandemic started. Where are they now?

Thousands of North Carolina students have disappeared from public schools since the start of the pandemic, raising concerns about whether they’ve given up on getting an education.

An analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University’s Big Local News project and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee found an estimated 240,000 students in 21 states whose absences could not be accounted for. These students didn’t move out of state, and they didn’t sign up for private school or homeschooling, according to publicly available data.

North Carolina had the fifth-most “missing” students on the list with 12,072 public school students who could not be accounted for in the AP analysis of enrollment data and Census records.

Half of North Carolina’s school districts and charter schools didn’t report having any missing students to the state. But other districts, like Charlotte-Mecklenburg, say they’ve spent considerable time contacting students who moved, dropped out and otherwise left during the pandemic.

“In many cases, families and/or children relocated to live with extended family so that parents could continue to work,” Ann White, CMS’ associate superintendent of student services, said in an interview. “In other cases, students took on part-time jobs themselves to help their families.”

How many students are missing?

To assess just how many students have gone missing, AP and Big Local News canvassed every state in the nation to find the most recently available data on both public and non-public schools, as well as census estimates for the school-age population.

Overall, public school enrollment fell by 710,000 students between the 2019-2020 and 2021-2022 school years in the 21 states plus Washington, D.C., that provided the necessary data. Even accounting for growth in homeschooling and private schools and population loss, AP determined that 240,000 students were missing.

The 12,072 missing North Carolina students, according to the AP’s analysis, represent less than 1% of the state’s public school population. But each missing student may mean a child not getting an education.

In September, the Winston-Salem/Forsyth Schools held a news conference asking for the community’s help in tracking down 1,000 missing students.

“We want to make certain that all of our students are reading by the third grade,” Ronda Mays, the district’s director of Family Engagement, said at the news conference. “In order to read by the third grade, you need to be in school K through second.”

The true number of missing students nationally is likely much higher because the AP couldn’t get enough data to include 29 states in its analysis.

AP found missing students such as Kailani Taylor-Cribb, who relocated to North Carolina after dropping out of Cambridge Public Schools in Massachusetts. Kailani complained that the district wasn’t meeting her needs as a Black student.

“All they had to do was take action,” Kailani told the Associated Press. “There were so many times they could have done something. And they did nothing.”

Kailani now lives in Asheville and teaches dance to elementary school kids. Last month, she passed her high school equivalency exams.

State grant to find missing students

In 2021, the General Assembly budgeted $7.3 million in COVID relief aid for school districts and charter schools to identify and locate missing students.

Concerns were raised by some educators about state lawmakers using the term “missing” to describe the unaccounted students. Brent Williams, superintendent of Lenoir County Schools, said calling these students “missing” could confuse the public.

“The student completely not accounted for in the traditional sense of what most people associate with the word missing is an almost never scenario, at least in my 30 years in the business,” Williams said at the State Board of Education’s March 2022 meeting.

A November report from the state Department of Public Instruction found that a majority of districts who had received funding to find missing students hadn’t spent the money yet. DPI attributed the delay to how schools have until September 2024 to spend the money.

Wake looking for 900 students

In Wake County, the state’s largest school district is trying to track down nearly 900 students whose whereabouts were unknown from the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 through June 2022.

Using a federal grant, Wake has contracted three social workers to travel the county looking for the students. Since starting their work in January, the Re-Engagement Social Workers have already located 141 students, according to Paul Koh, Wake’s assistant superintendent for student support services.

Koh said most of the 141 located students have enrolled in an educational institution outside of the district. Koh said the social workers are working with the other students to determine why they’re not in an educational program and to give them the support they need.

“The re-engagement work will continue until all possible avenues have been exhausted to locate and support this group of students,” Koh said in a statement.

Wake has also received $496,053 from the state to search for missing students.

CMS reconnecting with students

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, which is the state’s second largest district, has also received $693,323 from the state to help track missing students. But the district says it’s been actively tracking down students for the past three years.

Students from marginalized communities have been more likely to not enroll in school or to withdraw due to failure to attend since the start of the pandemic, according to Cotrane Penn, CMS’ executive director of student wellness & academic support.

Penn believes CMS’ number of missing students hasn’t increased dramatically since the pandemic because the district launched an aggressive project called Street Teams. School staff went into neighborhoods looking for students with whom school officials lost contact after first going to remote learning in March of 2020.

“At this point, there has been resolution on nearly all students who stopped attending,” said White, the CMS associate superintendent. “These resolutions include re-enrollment, improved attendance, securing enrollment at another school, and successful location of students relocated in other school districts.”

This month, CMS is re-launching Street Teams to support schools with home visits for students who have poor attendance or have stopped attending altogether.

“The situations many of our students face are complex,” White said. “School staff meet students where they are and seek to clear barriers impacting their school attendance and academic success.”

This article is based on data collected by The Associated Press and Stanford University’s Big Local News project. Data was compiled by Sharon Lurye of the AP, Thomas Dee of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education and Justin Mayo of Big Local News.