DeKALB – Two in five DeKalb High School students were chronically absent last year.

That means the number of DeKalb High School students who’ve missed at least a month’s worth of school with or without a valid excuse is trending toward pre-pandemic levels, according to attendance data released by the state of Illinois.

The numbers of absences in DeKalb schools was 35.9% in 2019, state report card data shows. There are many factors as to why a student may be absent from school, including illness, mental health issues, transportation problems and ailing caretakers.

One such way that DeKalb School District 428 is working to get students back in class is by enlisting a fourth dean.

The new position was created as part of a plan to support freshmen with meeting their social-emotional needs and post-secondary goals as they transition over the course of their high school experience toward graduation.

DeKalb High School principal Donna Larson said a fourth dean will help bolster staffing at the high school to better serve a growing population.

This past fall, DeKalb High School had 2,117 students enrolled in classes, officials said.

“We have an increase in enrollment,” Larson said. “We wanted to provide more efficient support to better align our system and our services for our students.”

DeKalb High School is not the only school where chronic absenteeism is trending toward pre-pandemic levels, with the rates dropping from 46% to 41.6% over the past year as the school district works to navigate the new normal prompted by COVID-19.

For 2022 and 2023, a student could have had up to 12 periods in the school day, with attendance being recorded for each of those periods, which officials said complicates the reporting and how the state calculates the absentee rates. Statewide chronic absenteeism has yet to subside to pre-pandemic levels, with data dipping slightly from 29.8% to 28.3% last year, according to state statistics. In 2019, that rate amounted to 17.5%.

Sarah Montgomery, the district’s director of teaching and learning - secondary education, touted what the high school has been able to accomplish over the past year by restructuring the system of student supports under the dean’s office.

DeKalb High School now employs cohorts to divvy up student caseloads for each dean on staff.

In the past, students were divided up alphabetically by last name, which Montgomery said proved to be less than ideal. She said the changes came with Principal Donna Larson.

“It’s harder to forge relationships that way,” Montgomery said. “Donna has restructured her building to allow this better flow of services and relationships with students and our families.”

Larson said the dean’s office restructuring has many benefits for students and their families.

“It builds stronger relationships with the students, the staff and families,” Larson said. “They can see trends quicker because they’re identifying early on ways to support the student through academics, through attendance, through any college and career exploration. They really get to know the individual throughout their four years at high school.”

Montgomery said the high school is excited about the opportunity to add a fourth dean so as to expand upon some of the success that had been found with the three deans the building already had.

“Currently, the three deans all split our senior caseload,” Montgomery said. “We wanted to make it more equitable for each cohort by having their own dean lead the work at each grade level.”

The high school’s four-year graduation rate climbed from 73.5% to 78.8% last year, while the statewide rate rose from 87.3% to 87.6% last year, state report card data shows.

The addition of a fourth dean makes for the latest effort made by DeKalb School District 428 to bolster support for students at the high school.

In the fall of 2022, the school board authorized an additional office professional to help support data entry, Larson said.

“Through our partnership with the [Regional Office of Education], we were able to give them more reports in a timely manner, so that they could reach out to families based off of the data entry and support from our office professional, which showed improvement and was a positive addition because we did decrease our chronic absenteeism,” Larson said.