All aboard: For these school districts, second bus rides are among the initiatives helping to turn around poor attendance

When Bella Youngrunningcrane was in third grade, a family argument or some other disruption at home would often cause her to miss the school bus, and she would spend the day at home rather than in school.

“We didn’t have transportation,” her aunt, Amanda Youngrunningcrane, recalled.  

Bella goes to elementary school in Deer River, an Itasca County town of 900 people about 20 miles northwest of Grand Rapids. In recent years, the Deer River Schools district has struggled with low attendance and high chronic absenteeism. It has lower rates of consistent attendance than the state average, with about 57% of its students attending more than 90% of the time they were enrolled in 2022, compared with the statewide average of almost 70%. 

To combat the trend, the district participates in a so-called full-service community school model, in which resources and workers are deployed to help with the deeper needs of students and families. One of the linchpins of that model is a second bus that will pick up students who miss the first one. That’s a big deal in this sprawling district, which covers 540 square miles and can leave students without secondary transportation adrift at home.  

But that’s not all. As one of 25 full-service schools in Minnesota, Deer River Schools also addresses other barriers that families might face — like a lack of health care, clothing needs, or housing and food insecurity — that can impact a student’s attendance. 

The district, which educates about 850 pre-K to 12th-grade students, is nearly split between Native American students and white students, with many of its Indigenous students coming from the neighboring Leech Lake reservation. In 2023, about 5% of the district’s students experienced homelessness and roughly 69% received free and reduced meals, according to data from the Minnesota Department of Education. 

In 2016, Deanna Hron, who was a kindergarten teacher at the time, noticed that absences were heavily affecting students’ academic achievement. Year after year, the school district has had a below state average proficiency level on state-wide tests, according to state data. 

“I noticed that a lot of my kids were having some basic needs that weren’t being met and that was impacting their attendance and their academic achievement,” she said, “so (I) started looking for some sort of solution to how we could help our students.”

Hron, now the full-service community school coordinator/manager at Deer River Elementary, said chronic absenteeism, defined as missing 10% of classroom time, has been improving over the past years, thanks to the full-service model. 

Absenteeism on the rise

Since 2018, chronic absenteeism has been on the rise across the state. From 2018 to 2022, there was about a 15% increase in chronic absenteeism within the elementary, middle and high school levels and a drop in consistent attendance, said Ivy Wheeler, director of the Collaborative Minnesota Partnerships to Advance Student Success for the Minnesota Department of Education.

This increase is evident in Deer River, which has even higher rates of chronic absenteeism. And behind every student who fails to show up to school is often a larger story, said Jessica DeVault, the truancy case manager at the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, which partners with Deer River Schools. 

The district and the band engage with families that may be experiencing challenges that get in the way of consistent attendance. DeVault is typically at Deer River twice a week, and she and Hron frequently meet to discuss student and family needs before the student could end up in court.

In the past, the band would get involved at the point of truancy rather than earlier on. Schools will make referrals to the band’s truancy division when a student has seven or more days of unexcused absences and DeVault and other case managers will work with students and families to prevent a family from being separated, if they can.

“They would be apprehensive to even work with us because, you know, child welfare,” DeVault said. “They just immediately were like, ‘Oh, no, you’re gonna take my kid.’”

Now, those referrals to the band really only happen once the school district has exhausted many of its other resources and efforts. DeVault has seen through her work that truancy is a symptom of a larger need for support. 

“There’s reasons why they’re truant,” she said. 

DeVault remembered seeing a student wearing flip flops in the winter. She contacted Hron to help get the child a pair of shoes and they went shopping together. That helped strengthen the relationship between the family and the school. 

Hron was also there for Bella’s family during some hard times. 

“There was a piece of our lives where it got really rough and patchy. I feel like Deanna was a huge support for Bella, like her safe zone,” Amanda Youngrunningcrane said. “If she notices a child doesn’t go to school, she goes in and asks questions that kind of helps you get a better understanding of home life. I think that really helped Bella feel like somebody else cared.” 

Bella often did not want to go to school and would miss the bus and end up spending the day at home. Amanda Youngrunningcrane said that with Hron’s support — and the district’s various programs, like the second bus — Bella changed her outlook and has since been attending school more often. 

Barriers to school attendance

DeVault said the root causes of low attendance can be things like housing instability, mental health, internet access and unstable income. The school district has been able to meet some families’ financial barriers, like an inability to afford internet or gas for the car. 

In such a vast region, Hron recognized that students who missed the bus — a frequent occurrence — and had no other transportation options or lived far away would have no choice but to be absent that day. 

So they started a program to dispatch a bus that picks up students who miss the first bus. “A lot of our families don’t have transportation, so when their child misses the bus, then it’s like a whole day,” Hron said. 

Since the addition of the second bus, Hron said, attendance has improved. On a recent day, the bus picked up six students who had missed the first bus earlier in the morning. 

“Those are six kids that wouldn’t be at school today if we didn’t go get them,” she said. “They would have missed the whole day rather than getting here at 10 o’clock and being able to participate in part of the day.” 

Funding for the bus program comes from a federal Full-Service Community Schools grant, which the district is utilizing for the fourth year. Another school district 80 miles to the southeast, Cloquet Public Schools, also had high rates of absenteeism and began a similar transportation program, offering rides to students who miss the first bus. 

That district had high absentee rates among its Native American population, many of whom are members of the neighboring Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. During the 2016-17 school year, about 15%-17% of Native American students at Cloquet’s public elementary schools were chronically absent, according to Teresa Angell, the district’s American Indian Education program director and Achievement & Integration coordinator. 

Marcie Antell lives with seven of her grandchildren — all of whom attend Cloquet Public Schools, ranging from elementary to middle school. On what she described can be hectic mornings, she’s found the rides to be extremely helpful. 

“Sometimes one of them can’t find their other shoe, or boot or coat or backpack,” Antell said. “Sometimes, a few of them run out and catch it and then the one that is still looking for their shoe misses it.”

A full day of driving

Bus driver Joseph Hedman — or Joey, as the kids and families call him — starts his day around 7:30 a.m. with pickups. He stays available between then and 11 a.m. when he gives the most rides to school. He estimated that on an average day he’ll transport about 10 people — sometimes driving as many as 200 miles. 

He often helps families whose vehicles are broken, he said, like one student he picked up 20 miles away after the family’s car hit a deer. If he notices families that are using the program every day for a week or so, he’ll reach out to the family and ask if they need more support; sometimes that can mean getting funds for gas or setting up the initial bus route to the home. 

“There are some that after they’ve been riding for a while, they’re just pretty much like, ‘Oh, hey, it’s just Joey.’ But then there’s other ones that like the first time you pick them up they’re like, ‘Oh, my God, thank you so much. My family was freaking out. They didn’t know what we’re gonna do.’ Those kind of cheer you up because it’s like, ‘Well, that’s what I’m here for.’ That’s literally what this program is for,” Hedman said.  

Absenteeism rates at the elementary schools have improved, with the schools seeing a reduction from 15%-17% of Native American students being chronically absent to about 9%-10% in the 2022 school year, Antell said. 

Even so, the efforts in Deer River and Cloquet have been met with pushback from some people, Hron said. She’s heard complaints that the bus program enables people to skip the regular bus and instead come to school later. She doesn’t believe they have people who take advantage of the program like that. 

Bella Youngrunningcrane, for example, doesn’t use the bus as much anymore, but she’s still been able to use it when needed, and that means she gets to go to school instead of being absent. 

“My sister doesn’t have a vehicle and usually when I leave, I’m off to work. If the kids don’t get on the bus or if they’re at Grandma’s, they don’t have a way to get to school if they missed the bus,” Amanda Youngrunningcrane said. 

Antell used to be able to give her grandchildren a ride if they missed the first bus, but both of her cars broke down last fall. 

“I don’t like them to stay home,” she said. “It affects their learning, their grades. They missed out on a whole day of learning. So they get behind, not terribly behind, but if you learn two times two is four on that day, they got you to memorize that and plus another multiplication.” 

Two years ago, Hron said Deer River Schools had 50 students who were chronically absent. Of those, 20 have improved their attendance. Another 10 of the students no longer attend the school, but the numbers show that 50% of the students who were chronically absent two years ago have improved their attendance this year, she said. 

“To me, that shows that they’re coming to school because they have the support in place,” she said. 

DeVault recalled one family she worked with that had two children who were sometimes on the brink of being dropped — meaning there was sometimes no contact from the family or the children wouldn’t show up for 25 consecutive days. After becoming more involved with the kids and family, by making the students an individualized education plan, she’s seen a huge difference. 

They now, in an average month, miss only one or two days of school. One of them, she said, made the honor roll last year. DeVault said having people at the schools who can provide mental health support and a sense of connection is a big contributing factor. 

“They know if they need support from me again, they can reach back out to me and say, ‘Hey, I’m falling into old habits, can we get back on track?’” DeVault said. “It’s mainly that support where someone believed in them.” 

A big challenge they’ve seen families face is housing security. Sometimes families will move to other homes and the school has no way to find them, DeVault said. 

“Cell phones are changed, stuff like that happens up here in the rural area, not just within the reservation, but other cities, too,” she said. “If someone loses their house, they’re in survival mode, so they’re not worried about making it to school. They’re thinking, ‘Where am I going to sleep tonight’ or ‘Where am I going to eat?’” 

More than an extra bus

Deer River has now been a full-service school for six years. It has coordinators in the elementary and high school building, as well as health care navigators. The school offers a food pantry, which Amanda Youngrunningcrane said the family has found to be very helpful in a hard time. 

Hron also helped the family get internet access, which is a common challenge among students. Not having good internet can sometimes result in students falling behind and getting discouraged with school, DeVault said. She’s been able to get a temporary hotspot for another family who had no internet. 

“Some of our communities don’t even have wired internet. They don’t have access to the internet and we don’t have infrastructure for that,” DeVault said. “A lot of their homework is on there. And if they can’t access it at home, then they’re falling behind. It is a struggle. Some of our families are on fixed income, or they don’t have any income.”

An education bill that passed in Minnesota last May included $15 million in funding for full-service community school grant opportunities over the next two years. Wheeler said there will be a new group of full-service community schools in the coming years because of that grant funding. 

DeVault used to receive about 60 referrals a year from Deer River — 60 students the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe would then help. That number has dropped since the band has been partnering more closely with the district. Now it receives about 10-15 referrals a year.