Snow covers a row of school buses. (Bulletin file)

Only two-thirds of students in Bend-La Pine Schools were “regular attenders” in the 2023-2024 school year.

The same was true overall in Oregon that same school year. A regular attender is defined as someone who attended at least 90% of classes.

Those percentages are worryingly low, for a long list of reasons we are sure you know. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Oregon did better, with nearly 80% of students being regular attenders.

The Oregon Legislature took on the attendance problem this past session. House Bill 3199 passed the Legislature, though it has not been signed by Gov. Tina Kotek. The bill requires the Oregon Department of Education to come up with a plan to figure out what might work to fix it.

Bend-La Pine Schools already works on the issue from multiple angles. It tries to work with families to improve it. Extracurricular activities can be a way to build more connection.

“A lot of things can lead to students missing school regularly, so we try to work on all those fronts: family circumstances, feeling unsafe or unwelcome at school, struggling academically, feeling uninterested or disengaged,” Scott Maben, director of communications for the Bend district, told us in an email. “We strive to improve attendance by addressing these issues as a system, and through individual interventions.”

The state of Oregon does not have much of a chance to improve graduation rates or any metric of school performance, if students just aren’t showing up.