60 students in the Chester County District have not been accounted for.
Sixty Chester County School District students have not been accounted for this school year, Chief Administrative Services Officer Will Pickens said at Monday’s school board meeting.
That means 60 students have not checked in with the schools, either by logging in to Chester’s online academy or showing up for in-person classes as part of the school’s hybrid plan.
The district is trying to track down the students, Public Information Officer Chris Christoff Jr. told The Herald. District officials are making phone calls to households.
“We will begin to do home visits if our initial attempts to contact prove unsuccessful,” Christoff said.
At the beginning of the school year, Superintendent Antwon Sutton told the Herald that many families had failed to register students for school. On the first day, many students arrived who had not registered and were able to register at school, Sutton said.
In July, Sutton told the Herald he was concerned that internet access would be a barrier for students this year, with state data showing 78.8% of CCSD students live in poverty.
“I think there’s going to be an issue,” CCSD Board Chair Maggie James said at the time.
However, CCSD has made significant progress at getting students connected. The received a state grant to offer internet to almost 1,000 student households in August.
Students have gone missing before, and the district was able to make contact with most of them. When Chester schools transitioned to online in March, 45 students were unaccounted for. Chester County Sheriff Max Dorsey proposed doing wellness checks on the students, Sheriff’s Department Public Information Officer Grant Suskin said.
The wellness checks took place over the summer. Suskin said the main priorities were to encourage families to check in and to make sure students were in safe living conditions.
The Sheriff’s Department successfully contacted 40 of the students, Suskin said. Two others had moved away, and three were not able to be reached.
“A lot of parents claimed the students had been doing work and they had been in contact with the schools and they weren’t sure why they were on the list,” Suskin said. Others said they were not forcing their children to finish the 2019 school year from home.
But the reasons students did not check in this fall are still unknown, Christoff said. The district will continue to investigate.
Contact school officials
If parents want to contact the district and make sure their child is accounted for, they are encouraged to call their respective schools, or call the district office at 803-385-6122, Christoff said.
This story was originally published October 1, 2020 at 9:47 AM.
