Camden City School District has set a goal of cutting its chronic absenteeism rate in half by June 2027, with officials pointing to transportation troubles, housing instability, health problems and bullying as key reasons students are missing class. The district says 2,310 students were chronically absent, and its rate for the 2025–26 school year was 49 percent.
Michael Coleman, the district's executive director of family and community engagement, laid out the plan at an advisory Board of Education meeting on October 27, according to TAPinto. Coleman told the board that the district needs to break down barriers to school attendance, identifying transportation, health and wellness, housing, academic stress, bullying, and disconnection from school as the main obstacles keeping kids out of class, per the same report.
Why So Many Students Are Missing School
Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing at least 10 percent of school days in a given year, a threshold used statewide according to the New Jersey State Policy Lab. Camden's district identifies students who miss at least two days a month and works with them directly, the TAPinto report notes. Coleman said most students' absences are not their fault, and he stressed that attendance is not simply about compliance — it's about understanding what is keeping kids from getting to school in the first place.
The Camden City School District advises families to seek support if health, transportation, housing or another challenge is affecting attendance. That guidance aligns with the district's stated 2026–2027 direction, which lists attendance, a sense of belonging and barrier removal among its priorities, with the goal that students attend regularly, feel safe and supported, and receive timely help when barriers arise.
A Three-Tier Response, From Phone Calls to Home Visits
To reach that goal, the district is leaning on a three-tier program. Tier one covers attendance discussions, expectations and family communication for all students. Tier two adds more intensive support, including mentoring from a student's favorite teacher and possible home visits. Tier three, reserved for the most persistent cases, means frequent home visits and counseling, according to the district's presentation reported by TAPinto.
How Camden's Numbers Compare
The scale of the challenge shows up in the state's own figures. New Jersey's statewide chronic absenteeism rate climbed to 18.1 percent in 2021-22, up from a pre-pandemic rate of 10.6 percent in 2018-19, the State Policy Lab reported. By 2023-24, the statewide rate had eased to 14.9 percent, trailing only Alabama's 14.8 percent among states in the lab's comparison.
Camden's district, by contrast, has remained far above that statewide average. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported the district's rate at 46.9 percent in 2023-24, or 13 percentage points higher than before the pandemic. NJ Spotlight News, in an earlier 2024 report, put the share of chronically absent Camden students at about 35 percent, down from 60 percent during the pandemic, while also noting that the district's daily average attendance had risen from 75 percent during the pandemic to close to 90 percent at the time of that report.
The State Policy Lab's analysis also found that in 2023-24, districts in Camden and Paterson had chronic absenteeism rates above 35 percent, while districts such as Millburn Township and Westfield stayed below 8 percent. In its discussion of 2021-22, the Lab found that rates in New Jersey were higher among historically underserved groups, including Black, Hispanic, economically disadvantaged, multilingual learner and disabled students.
Other Camden-area schools have faced similar struggles. The Inquirer reported that Camden Prep's chronic absenteeism rate hit 50 percent in 2023-24, compared with 32 percent before the pandemic, while KIPP Cooper Norcross's rate rose from 21.1 percent in 2018-19 to 45.5 percent in 2023-24, a jump of 24.4 percentage points.
Camden's push to cut absenteeism in half over the next eight months will test whether home visits, mentoring and targeted family outreach can move a number that has stayed stubbornly high since the pandemic. For now, the district's own account of its current 49 percent rate and its 2,310 chronically absent students stands as the baseline against which that effort will be measured.
