Chattooga County Schools are receiving national attention for dramatically reducing chronic absenteeism, bringing the district’s rate below where it stood before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Attendance Works, a national nonprofit organization focused on improving school attendance, recently published Chattooga County as a “Success Story,” highlighting how the rural school district reduced its chronic absenteeism rate from 42.2 percent during the pandemic to 18.2 percent during the 2025-2026 school year. Before the pandemic, the district’s rate stood at 18.8 percent.

The organization says Chattooga accomplished the turnaround without a large influx of new resources, instead changing how the school system identifies and responds to students who are missing school.

Superintendent Dr. Michelle Helie told Attendance Works that problems became particularly apparent during the fall of 2020, when families could choose between virtual and in-person instruction. At one point, approximately 17 percent of students were neither attending classes in person nor logging on for virtual instruction.

The district hired a truancy officer for the 2021-2022 school year and strengthened attendance procedures, but over time the approach expanded beyond simply enforcing attendance rules.

By the 2023-2024 school year, social workers, counselors and office staff were contacting families when students were absent and asking what was preventing them from coming to school.

Those conversations uncovered problems ranging from families who could not afford gasoline to take a child to school after missing the bus to homes without running water for washing clothes. School officials worked with counselors, social workers, churches, Helping Hands, food programs and other community organizations to address some of those barriers.

Teachers also identified students dealing with anxiety following the isolation associated with the pandemic. The district established a small learning center where high school students struggling with anxiety could attend in person while using a digital learning platform, providing a transition back into the regular high school setting.

In February 2024, Helie established a districtwide attendance committee. Individual schools have since developed their own attendance incentives, including jump-park trips, ice cream socials, bicycle giveaways, outdoor game days and movie celebrations.

Beginning in fall 2025, school-level teams also began monitoring students who had missed 10 percent or more of their school days, allowing staff to identify students developing a pattern of chronic absenteeism rather than those who were simply out several days because of an illness.

The national recognition comes as Chattooga County Schools have also continued to make headlines for another unusual aspect of the district — the four-day school week.

Chattooga students attend school Tuesday through Friday and are out each Monday. The schedule was originally adopted as a cost-saving measure more than a decade ago and has repeatedly attracted media attention from outside Chattooga County.

Just this summer, Atlanta television stations again featured Chattooga’s four-day schedule. Superintendent Helie told CBS Atlanta that the district has received inquiries from other school systems in Georgia as well as districts in Tennessee and Alabama interested in Chattooga’s experience with the shortened week.

The four-day week also figures directly into the new Attendance Works report. The organization notes that Chattooga operates Tuesday through Friday and that the district serves 2,534 students in five schools.

While the four-day calendar is only one part of a much broader attendance strategy, the latest numbers show a substantial change from the height of the pandemic.

A chronic absenteeism rate that once affected more than four out of every ten Chattooga County students has now fallen to fewer than two out of ten — and slightly below the district’s pre-pandemic level.