More than 42% of Portland high school students are chronically absent — missing at least 18 school days a year — and the number is climbing, a sign that families have checked out of a system that no longer serves them.

The Portland Press Herald reported that the district's assistant superintendent of secondary schools, Tremain Holloway, presented the grim data to the school board this week. The 42% rate marks a 4% jump over last year. Chronic absenteeism doubled after COVID and hasn't come back down. When nearly half of high schoolers won't show up, the institution has lost its mandate.

Elementary schools tell a different story — and expose the real problem. Portland's primary grades cut chronic absenteeism to 11%, down 8% from 2022. How? Prizes, celebrations, alarm clocks, and in-school laundry machines. The district rewards attendance rather than punishing absence. It works for eight-year-olds. It doesn't work for teenagers who have figured out the curriculum isn't worth their time.

Holloway admitted as much, saying the data shows current strategies aren't working and promising a new plan by December. Vice Chair Micky Bondo said she wasn't surprised by the high school numbers, particularly among Hispanic and Latino students, and asked for more data on suspension rates by race and staff diversity — as if the real problem is the racial composition of attendance officers.

The Portland Press Herald framed the absenteeism spike partly on ICE enforcement, noting that arrests in Southern Maine last January drove a spike that echoed through the rest of the year. The Philadelphia Inquirer, covering a similar story in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, took a different approach — framing absenteeism as a connection problem and emphasizing that the district's response must be "both systematic and individualized." Cherry Hill's district director Scott Goldthorp told the board that "attendance itself isn't the ultimate outcome we're looking for" — the goal is making students feel connected.

Cherry Hill's numbers are less dire but still telling. The district-wide chronic absenteeism rate sits at 14%, slightly below the state average. But 12th graders hit 25.8% — above New Jersey's 21% average. High schools there are also trending in the wrong direction. Both East and West Cherry Hill high schools saw absenteeism increase. The elementary schools that improved used tangible weekly rewards — the same bribe-the-kids approach Portland uses.

Here is the bipartisan failure: both districts treat disengagement as a logistics problem. Portland installs laundry machines. Cherry Hill talks about "belonging." Neither district will say what everyone watching the numbers already knows — that the academic product is broken. When a school can't convince a teenager that showing up is worth it, the answer isn't a better alarm clock.

Students who are economically disadvantaged, multilingual, homeless, Hispanic or Latino, and those with special needs are overrepresented among the chronically absent in Portland. More than half the district's enrollment is students of color and nearly 30% are multilingual learners. The district has three high schools — Portland, Deering, and Casco Bay — and students choose which to attend. The district did not provide data broken down by school.

New Jersey's own rules tell you where the bureaucracy's priorities sit: illness and physician appointments are not excused absences, but "Take Our Children to Work Day" is. The system punishes sickness and rewards photo ops.

The open question is whether any public school district can reverse these numbers without first admitting that the curriculum, the culture, and the bureaucracy are the problem — not the kids who refuse to sit in empty rooms.