Social workers go door-to-door searching for absent students

Social workers with Indianapolis Pubic Schools are going door-to-door in hopes of finding hundreds of missing students.

Summer vacation ended for the state's largest school district on Monday, but many students have yet to return.

The first week of school nearly in the books at George Washington Community School, but there are still roughly 150 students who haven't gotten their books.

That’s where social worker James Cullen comes in.

"I'm from Washington Community school right over there. I'm trying to find out what school Rueben is going to?" Cullen said, after knocking on a door in a nearby Indianapolis neighborhood Friday.

Cullen has been going door-to-door all week, in hopes of locating some of the students who the school has on its roster. In the case of Rueben, the explanation was a simple change in school.

"One down, 150 to go," Cullen said.

"We need to make sure that we account for every single student," said Teresa Ezell, principal of Washington Community School.

Ezell said every school is required to locate the kids on their roster. The process begins before the school year with letters and online communication about the start of school.

This week, the letters turned into phone calls from teachers but that didn’t work for everyone.

"Disconnected numbers, numbers that don't work... and then at that point they refer all those names over to the social worker," Ezell said.

"They have to be somewhere," Cullen said, as he drove through one Indianapolis neighborhood where missing students reportedly lived.

Social workers like James are doing the same thing across the district and it's slowly making a difference. According to IPS, attendance on the first day of school on Monday was 77 percent of the projected enrollment. By Thursday, the number was up to 89 percent.

That doesn't mean there isn't work left to do. Cullen still finds plenty of homes with nobody there.

"We'll leave a note on the door,” Cullen said, “asking them to call the school when they get time."

Cullen said many of the remaining students and their families, especially in high poverty neighborhoods, could be nowhere near their listed address.

"It's not uncommon that they move three or four times in a year,” Cullen said. “So they are in three or four schools in one year."

Despite the difficulty, Cullen said he’ll keep knocking on doors for as long as it takes.

"The literature says, if a kid misses two days a month they are more likely not to pass the I-STEP and not to end up graduating or be retained,” he said. “So it's hard to make up. There is no substitute for being in school."