school avoidance liaisons<\/a>\u201d are full-time school employees such as teachers, guidance counselors, administrators or social workers who will work with parents of kids refusing to come to school, per DOE documents obtained by The Post. They won\u2019t be paid extra for their new roles.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/mother-walks-daughter-school-first-140447495.jpg\")
NYC schools are set to deploy \u201cschool avoidance liaisons\u201d to tackle chronic absenteeism. REUTERS<\/p>\n
They\u2019re tasked with intervening with the families of at-risk students early and connecting them with mental health and other resources offered by the school to try to bring them back into the classroom.<\/p>\n
Principals will have to submit their choice for the role as part of their consolidated plan by Sept. 30, per the documents.<\/p>\n
School-avoidant behaviors are often linked to disability or mental health issues such as anxiety or depression.<\/p>\n
A whopping 43% of disabled students were chronically absent in the 2024-2025 school year,<\/p>\n
Education watchdogs blasted the city for allowing the chronic absenteeism crisis to balloon into a years-long epidemic that would require these liaisons in the first place. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe uptick in chronic absenteeism over the last few years has reached crisis proportions. Schools need to get creative in addressing the problem,\u201d Craig Slutzkin, treasurer of Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, an NYC pro-merit group, said. <\/p>\n
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The school avoidance liaisons were established as part of an agreement following a 2024 class-action lawsuit launched by families of chronically absent disabled students, alleging that city schools didn\u2019t have the resources to keep chronically absent disabled students and students with mental health issues in the classroom.<\/p>\n
Critics called the new role yet another unpaid burden on teachers, arguing the work should be handled by other professionals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy can\u2019t other city departments handle this? This is just another task that is going to divert teachers\u2019 attention from teaching,\u201d a DOE insider said.<\/p>\n
Missing time in the classroom leads to severe academic problems that some students may never recover from \u2014 including low math and reading grades, drug use, criminal behavior or dropping out entirely, multiple studies found.<\/p>\n
![\"Parents](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/parents-children-wait-line-outside-140442664.jpg\")
Over one third of city students are chronically absent. REUTERS<\/p>\n
David Bloomfield, a professor of educational leadership, law and policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, called the liaisons a \u201cgood first step\u201d but said more needs to be done.<\/p>\n
\u201cOutsourcing accountability is not an option,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The DOE\u2019s absenteeism problem is among the many issues plaguing city schools. <\/p>\n
NYC public schools have been bleeding kids for years, with the latest demographic snapshot showing that they\u2019ve lost over 150,000 students since 2015.<\/p>\n
City reading scores for grades 3-8 plummeted an appalling 6 percentage points<\/a> since last year, with just 50.3% of Big Apple students proficient on the state\u2019s English Language Arts test<\/p>\nOver 900 city schools \u2014 nearly half the total \u2014 had half their student bodies failing state math and reading tests.<\/p>\n
A DOE spokesperson said that the School Avoidance Liaisons will establish a \u201cstrong framework\u201d to combat chronic absenteeism. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile achieving our shared goal of every student being chronically present will require sustained effort, NYC Public\u00a0Schools is committed to removing barriers to attendance and ensuring every student has the opportunity to thrive academically, socially, and emotionally,\u201d the DOE spokesperson said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City schools are set to deploy attendance cops to combat their ongoing chronic absenteeism epidemic. Some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4337,57,9,56,63,65,64,5271,2585,58],"class_list":["post-345327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-department-of-education","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-schools","tag-students","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}