By Emily Tate Sullivan, The Hechinger Report
LOVELAND — Just beyond the front doors of Namaqua Elementary School, past a banner that reads “attendance matters — every school day counts,” a stuffed wildcat in sunglasses sits in the lobby, observing the comings and goings of students.
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The school mascot is called Wyatt, and the students are told that he monitors attendance. Are the children arriving on time? Did they make it to school today?
Wyatt is one prong of the Colorado elementary school’s strategy to reduce chronic absenteeism, which is common even among the youngest students. Nationally, the grade with the worst attendance record before high school is kindergarten, a year that some families view as optional and low-stakes but educators treat as foundational for establishing healthy habits, routines and relationships.
Each week at Namaqua, the classroom with the best attendance wins Wyatt’s “Beat the Bell Challenge.” As a reward, the stuffie pays a visit to the winning classroom, and students get to select a coupon for their prize; options include pajama day, extra recess and lunch with the teacher.
It’s simple but effective, said Angie Geraghty, the school principal.
“We joke that we want the kids to have FOMO, like they’re missing out on something if they’re not in school,” Geraghty said. (Moments later, almost as if to underscore her point, children could be heard erupting in squeals and cheers in the gymnasium, where a “mad scientist” was presenting during a schoolwide assembly.)
“Because if they’re not here,” she added, “we can’t teach them.”
Like schools all over the country, Namaqua has struggled with high rates of chronic absenteeism, especially for the youngest learners, in recent years. Statewide, Colorado has one of the highest rates of kindergarten missing school; 29% of these students were chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year — defined as missing 10% or more of the school year. That compares to 24% for all the elementary grades combined.
During the 2022-23 school year, when the problem appeared to reach its peak, 35% of Namaqua’s kindergarten students were chronically absent, compared to 30% schoolwide. In the 2025-26 school year, after a coordinated effort that has involved everyone from district staff to classroom teachers, 14% of Namaqua kindergartners were chronically absent, compared to 18% schoolwide, according to data provided by the Thompson School District.
Namaqua’s progress reflects what research shows can help schools turn around: increasing student and family engagement, fostering relationships between students and staff, communicating with parents and caregivers about children’s attendance patterns, and making sure students feel supported and connected at school.
That work has to start early and be reinforced often, said Michael Gottfried, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education who has studied school-based interventions to reduce chronic absenteeism.
“Your child is developing skills in kindergarten that will help them throughout their entire schooling,” he said. “What they learn in kindergarten is going to help with first grade, and what they learn in first grade is going to help with second grade. It’s a big snowball effect.”
Charted on a graph, the grade-level chronic absenteeism percentages for K-12 form a “Nike swoosh,” as Hedy Chang, CEO, president and founder of the nonprofit Attendance Works, put it. The rates are high in the earliest grades, drop to their lowest point around fourth and fifth grades, and then continue to climb throughout middle and high school. In some states, the absenteeism rate in kindergarten is higher than that of 12th graders.
“Kindergarten — that experience is so pivotal. It lays a foundation for future success,” Chang said. “Students are much more likely to be chronically absent in subsequent years if they’re chronically absent in kindergarten.”
But despite its importance, the kindergarten year has several unique challenges to overcome.
For one, kindergarten is mandatory in fewer than half of U.S. states. Colorado is not one of them.
“Families are like, ‘But it’s not required,’” said Mary Rutledge Ward, a student engagement specialist and lead on the positive attendance team at the Thompson School District. “But it does matter. You came in and filled out the paperwork and did the tour and bought the new backpack and got your kid excited.”
Ward added: “Once you’ve enrolled, you’ve said your expectation is that we provide your child with an education, and we’re here to do that.”
Then there’s the oft-repeated protest from some parents who are being reminded that their child’s attendance is essential, said Geraghty, the Namaqua principal: “It’s just kindergarten.”
Brittany Trimbath, a kindergarten teacher at Namaqua, said that attendance is especially important because so much of the learning revolves around listening, interacting and playing. She can’t exactly send home a packet of make-up work that recreates the experience of teaching students the sounds for the letter a.
“Kindergarten is such a hands-on, experiential learning grade for them, coming in and interacting with their friends,” Trimbath said. “The things we’re doing are not necessarily always paper-and-pencil activities. They need to be here to experience the read-alouds, to hear the conversations we’re having.”
There are other challenges, too — like the way school closures and remote learning during the pandemic made families feel like it wasn’t so critical, after all, for their children to physically show up to school each day. In the years since traditional in-person learning has resumed, many families seem to be more comfortable treating school attendance as elective.
“That societal permission had been given,” said Jennifer Guthals, director of student success at Thompson School District, “that you can opt out.”
Other long-standing barriers — like the newness of kindergarten and the anxiety that some children have around it, or unmet basic needs such as housing and transportation — remain in place and, in many school communities, have only become more urgent.
At Cottonwood Plains Elementary School, a Title I school less than 10 miles north of Namaqua in Fort Collins, staff members created a community resource room inside the building (with exterior access for family privacy) to remove some of the barriers that were keeping kids home, said Eric Harting, the school principal. The room is well-stocked with non-perishable foods, shoes and clothing in all sizes, diapers and other newborn essentials, hats, backpacks, toiletries and much more. All of it is available for free to students and families — no questions asked.
“We’re eliminating as many variables as we can,” said Harting, adding that he’s heard from families over the years that a lack of clean clothes kept their kids from school. “Now you can have clean clothes whenever you want them.”
One recent spring morning, Luz Kipsey, a bilingual family engagement specialist at Cottonwood Plains, called the mother of a fourth grader who had recently transferred to the school from out of state. Kipsey told the mom about the community hub, and the mom mentioned that her fourth grader didn’t have a backpack. The child later came in and was able to pick out one she liked.
It was a brief exchange, but one that would hopefully have a lasting impact on both the parent and child, Kipsey said. Staff at Cottonwood Plains want students and their families to feel connected to and supported by the school.
“Some families didn’t have the best experience in school when they were kids,” said Harting. “They are hesitant to come to school.”
The community hub is one way to try to rewrite that narrative. Another is that Harting tries to meet families where they are — sometimes that means physically holding meetings for families in their neighborhoods, such as the mobile home park 2 miles from the school where about a third of Cottonwood Plains’ 270 students live.
“We go to their turf. We eat together,” Harting said. “You have to really work on building relationships with people from the start.”
He acknowledged that he has his work cut out for him as a white principal with “terrible” Spanish-language skills leading a dual-language school where between a quarter and a third of students speak primarily Spanish at home.
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Walking through the hallways of the elementary school building, Harting’s efforts are evident. He greets students by name, noticing a recent haircut or a new pair of shoes, asking how their weekend went.
“Things like that that show you see them, you know? That they matter,” said Harting.
That helps to make school feel like a safe, welcoming environment where kids want to be, which is more than half the battle, he said. But it also comes in handy when he needs to talk to families about absences, because Harting and the student and the student’s family have already established a rapport.
“You can’t have that conversation with someone who doesn’t know you and trust you,” he added.
In the 2022-23 school year, 27% of all students and 44% of kindergartners were chronically absent at Cottonwood Plains, according to data provided by the district. In the 2025-26 school year, the percentage of chronically absent students plummeted to 14% of all students and 19% of kindergartners.
Invariably, this work is school-specific. Every school community is different. Its needs are different. While Cottonwood Plains serves a significant population of native Spanish speakers, 30% of students at Namaqua have individualized education programs.
However, the district has directed schools toward initiatives that have been shown to work across contexts. All schools are expected to greet students each morning with “warm welcomes,” for example. School leaders also benefit from the district’s extensive data trove, which analyzes attendance trends for every student, in every grade, at every school. Ward said the data is key to their work.
Ward and her two colleagues on the district’s positive attendance team have been a large part of the district’s success in slashing its chronic absenteeism rate, both school principals said. They were hired with Covid-era funding, but after those dollars dried up, their positions were made part of the district’s general fund, she said.
Someone from the positive attendance team is available to meet regularly with all 16 elementary schools in the district. Ward meets with half of them, including Namaqua.
At Namaqua, that meeting is held on most Fridays with the principal, dean of students, secretary and health aide, and together they review trends in their attendance data, evaluate individual cases that need attention and brainstorm solutions.
It was during one of those weekly meetings last winter that the idea to make Wyatt the wildcat a signature part of the school’s attendance strategy emerged.
For kindergarten, specifically, that team decided to emphasize the importance of attendance during the school’s annual open house for incoming kindergartners and their families. The event includes a kindergarten “commitment letter” signing and a session where current kindergartners teach the incoming class about what to expect.
The school has also sent postcards — “written” by Wyatt — to students who have improved their attendance, congratulating them on their progress. One girl even wrote him back.
“We used to have letters that were super punitive, like, ‘Get your kids to school — or else,’ that I’ve literally had thrown in my face,” Geraghty said. “We need to have open communication. I don’t want it to be punitive, because then we’ve shut that door.”
Now, the school’s tardy slips say, “Happy to see you,” and magnets sent home to families say, “Strive for less than five days absent.”
When staff at Cottonwood Plains made a similar shift in tone and wording, they also started to notice a change in how families responded, Harting said.
“We moved away from threatening language to supportive language, from hollow consequences to problem-solving,” he said.
Both principals have found it helpful to get classroom teachers involved too. Those are typically the people in a school who families trust most, Chang said.
“Teachers are a force when it comes to getting kids to school,” Ward said, not least because they have their own interests at stake. “There’s this assumed expectation and really heartfelt desire to catch the kids up — which takes time and energy and attention away from the rest of the class. They have to be really flexible at times.”
At Namaqua, staff have worked with teachers on how to bring up attendance with families without sounding judgmental or accusatory. Mostly, that just means laying out the data matter-of-factly.
Ward offered an example: “‘Your child has missed 13 days as of November. The average in class is two absences. This really worries me. Help me understand how we can help you.’”
During fall and spring teacher conferences at Namaqua, every family gets a letter outlining how their student’s attendance is going, even if they had perfect attendance. The letters are coded green, yellow and red, based on the number of absences.
Trimbath, the kindergarten teacher, said she walks parents through the information in that letter and connects attendance patterns to outcomes such as high school graduation rates. “It’s a nice conversation to have,” she said.
She also regularly sends families messages through the district’s two-way communications app. If a child misses one day, she said, she might send a note like, “We’ve missed your student today. Hope everything is OK.” If a child is out for longer, she would suggest some activities they can do at home but emphasize the importance of returning to school.
Attendance conversations used to be difficult for Trimbath, she said, but now that the issue is a “whole building-wide effort,” she finds that it gets easier each year.
“We want them to enjoy being at school, to love learning,” she said. “I need them here to do my magic.”
This story about chronic absenteeism was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
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