According to data from the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction, the average Chronic Absenteeism Rate (CAR) for Native American students in the state has climbed in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The CAR for all students in the state increased from 12% to 20% between the 2018-2019 and 2022-2023 school years, but the data further showed the CAR for Native American students in North Dakota was more than twice as high as the state average even before the pandemic, with 30% chronically absent in 2018-2019.

The CAR for Native American students in the state spiked to 44% in 2021-2022 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns but did drop slightly to 39% in the 2022-2023 school year. Based on the latest data from the NDDPI, the chronic absenteeism rate for Native American students held at 39% in the 2023-2024 school year.

Minot Public Schools had 7,637 students K-12 in the 2023-2024 school year, 4.6% of whom were Native American or Native Alaskan. According to NDDPI data for 2023-2024, the CAR for Native American students attending MPS was 43%, 19 points higher than the rate for all students.

The data from the NDDPI reflects only the CAR of Native American students who attend public school districts and does not include students who attend schools on Native American reservations in the state, which are under the purview of the Bureau of Indian Education or their respective tribes.

Shane Martin, superintendent of Turtle Mountain Community School in Belcourt, said TMCS is the largest reservation school in North Dakota and had an attendance rate of 87% in 2023-2024, about six points below the statewide average that year. Martin said this rate hadn’t fluctuated much in the years after the pandemic, but the impacts of the pandemic lingered far longer for reservation schools, as some tribal mandates kept students out of schools for a longer period of time than public schools did.

“We were out of school for an extended period of time, way beyond what the state did. That was because a lot of our people are suffering from multiple factors like diabetes, blood pressure and heart disease. At the onset of COVID, a lot of those people who got sick never recovered. Our tribe was being proactive in saying, ‘Well, we’re going to keep you guys home longer and keep the isolation on longer, because more of our people are dying,'” Martin said.

Martin attributed the attendance rate to factors that have existed in the Native American experience going back generations.

“As of 1926, 83% of all Native American kids were in boarding schools. Back in the day, it was ‘kill the indian, save the man.’ Everyone was trying to be assimilated to Westernized culture. Get rid of your language,” Martin said. “Maybe three or four lifespans of children and their ancestors have still oppressed the thought of being in a school system. There’s still that trust factor that has gone away.”

Martin said his district has taken efforts to address that issue of trust by hiring a districtwide family engagement director to provide multi-tiered levels of support to engage with families and bolster attendance and confront truancy.

“If a kid is absent frequently, we’re calling parents. We’re sending letters home. We’re trying to get those parents to come in and engage with them so that they trust the schools and know the schools are going to do everything they can to keep their kids safe, fed and educated,” Martin said.

Martin said the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa has even instituted stipends for students to incentivize good attendance and graduation. Despite being a large district, Martin said TMCS is quite rural and offers alternative schedules and curriculum to students who have difficulties making it to school. Accommodations also are made for working students who must have jobs during the school year to help their families.

“There’s so many things that deal with decades of multigenerational trauma from being on the reservation and the economic disparities that we have that we try to work around to give our kids a safe haven for education and to engage strongly with parents or guardians so they understand we’re trying to do best for their children,” Martin said.