By Dr. Kara Stern
A few weeks ago I watched a fitness instructor lock his classroom door two minutes into class. A woman arrived just after, rattled the knob, gestured to be let in. He pointed at his watch, shook his head, and turned his back on her. She left. I thought: If that were me, I’m not sure I’d come back to this gym.
That moment is playing out in schools every morning. A student walks in late. The adult at the checkpoint looks up and communicates, in whatever way, that they are a problem. And a kid who was already having a hard time decides, consciously or not, that this place isn’t for them.
The superintendent of Arvin Unified School District in California had a hunch that the way her staff greeted late students was doing damage. So she and her team retrained every adult at every checkpoint to replace “you’re late again” with “I’m so glad to see you.” The change cost nothing. Chronic absenteeism dropped by more than 50 percent.
That result shouldn’t surprise us, even if the simplicity does. It’s worth sitting with what Arvin actually figured out: that how schools receive students is itself a mental health intervention.
The Loop We’re Not Talking About
Mental health and student attendance are not parallel problems. They feed each other. Anxiety and depression are now the top health-related drivers of absenteeism in many districts.
The conventional assumption is that mental health struggles drive absenteeism, and sometimes they do. But a recent longitudinal study reveals a more unsettling dynamic: the more a student is absent, the greater the toll on their mental health. Absences compound the very struggles that may have caused them in the first place.
That finding puts real urgency behind reducing absenteeism early, and it puts real pressure on the question of what kind of culture makes a student want to come back. Which means a punitive response to a late or absent student, the recorded tardy, the cold reception, the “you’re late again,” doesn’t just fail to help. It adds to the weight a struggling student is already carrying.
What’s Within Reach Right Now
School-based mental health services move the needle, and so does reducing access to screens. Districts should fight for both, even knowing they require budget, policy, and time. What doesn’t require any of that is culture.
When students feel known and welcomed by the adults in their building, they’re more likely to keep showing up, and more likely to share what’s actually keeping them away. Once families and students start naming the real barriers, those barriers become solvable. That’s what family engagement looks like in practice—not a program or a portal, but a relationship built one interaction at a time.
Arvin built that relationship at the front door. Every school has one.
Dr. Kara Stern is Director of Education at SchoolStatus, where she works with districts nationwide on attendance and family engagement strategies. A former high school teacher, middle school principal, and head of school, she holds a doctorate in Teaching and Learning from NYU.
