Attendance in the Face of ICE Operations

By Madie Spartz

In the past month, the chaos and fear in communities across Minnesota have caused major drops in attendance across the state. Rochester Public Schools, for example, reported a 417% increase in absenteeism among multilingual students. Several districts have scrambled to provide virtual learning options for students who do not feel safe coming to school.  

This has brought renewed and urgent attention to school attendance policy, and specifically, what’s known as the “15-day drop” policy. Because of the implications for school funding, and for families afraid of being referred for truancy or being unenrolled from school when they are already living in fear, whether to adjust the 15-day drop is one of the critical local policy questions emerging as a result of irresponsible federal policy.

What Happens When A Student Misses School?

In Minnesota law, there are provisions outlining what happens when students miss school on a repeated basis without an approved excuse. After 3 total unexcused absences, consecutive or not, schools are required to send a letter home. After 7 total unexcused absences, consecutive or not, the student’s county is notified and they are referred to a child welfare agency. It’s important to note that a child welfare referral is not the same as child protective services (CPS). Depending on the county, a child welfare agency could be a local non-profit or a division within the county itself; but child welfare is not CPS or truancy court.

Separate from a county’s response to truancy, if a student accumulates 15 consecutive absences, excused or unexcused, they are automatically dropped from their school’s enrollment. This is the 15-day drop at the center of so many policy questions right now– more on that below. 

Finally, a new law passed last year requires that if both the school and the child welfare agency are unable to contact the family or locate the student who has been dropped due to 15 consecutive unexcused absences, the school district must notify the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE). 

How It Impacts School Funding and Operations

While it interacts with attendance, the 15-day drop policy is really a school funding mechanism. By dropping students from the rolls who no longer attend the school, the state ensures that schools are not receiving funds for students they aren’t serving.  Furthermore, thanks to the law passed last year, if both the school and the county cannot locate a student or get in touch with their family, MDE is now keeping a centralized record of who those children are. However, in an extreme and unprecedented situation like the ICE surge in Minnesota, the 15-day drop policy has many unintended consequences, including:

• A child may miss 15 consecutive days of school, excused for reasons of fear of leaving their home, and still be dropped from the rolls, even if their school is still in contact with them or actively providing support services;
• Schools may feel pressure to “fudge” attendance data in order to protect a student from being 15-day dropped;
• In both of the above cases, school, district, and state-level attendance data loses accuracy, in the midst of a pre-existing absenteeism crisis in Minnesota;
• Schools and districts face unpredictability in their funding, with the effects felt most profoundly by schools serving the highest-need students;
• If schools deviate from normal attendance protocol to protect students vulnerable to immigration enforcement, students who are absent or unaccounted for for other reasons may fall through the cracks and become vulnerable to abuse or neglect.

The Implications for Students & Families

In a moment when families are facing upheaval and trauma, the business-as-usual approach to attendance policy has the potential to put undue strain on families. Even a family in regular communication with their school with excused absences would be disenrolled after 15 consecutive days, when they are simply waiting until it’s safe to return. And for many, the prospect of a referral to the county when they are worried about family separation or detention feels like an added risk rather than support.

Solutions to Meet the Moment

While Operation Metro Surge is completely unprecedented in the modern era, there are provisions in state law that allow the Commissioner of Education to temporarily suspend the 15-day drop for purposes of school funding due to “calamity… or other justifiable cause.” Exercising this authority—while clearly defining its scope and limits—could take some of the pressure off schools and provide assurance that their funding will not be jeopardized due to students staying home for safety reasons. 

Furthermore, MDE should issue explicit and direct guidance to help schools understand the laws that exempt students from attendance and how those exemptions interact with the 15-day drop policy. Providing schools with local policy options aligned with current law would offer concrete guidance and best practices for situations commonly occurring in schools. Strong and clear guidance from MDE would prevent inaccurate or inconsistent reporting and reassure families that they will not face escalating interventions that create fear—while still preserving the critical safety nets students need. 

Both of the above solutions allow for immediate action, which is sorely needed and frankly overdue; Operation Metro Surge is now well into its second month and schools have been battling this chaos for that entire time. For longer term solutions, the Legislature could consider changing the 15-day drop policy to its original intent, where only 15 consecutive unexcused absences would lead to a student being dropped from the rolls. Regardless of what happens this legislative session, the policy process moves too slowly to meet the urgency of the moment, which is why it’s so crucial for MDE to exert its authority and use its broad reach to provide clear guidelines to schools and families.

The Need for Change Beyond Operation Metro Surge

This moment demands urgent clarity that our current leaders are not meeting. Schools and families are facing an immediate crisis rooted in fear and safety, and that requires explicit policy and consistently implemented practice. Current law provides a path forward through the Commissioner’s authority to keep kids enrolled in school through “calamity or other justifiable cause,” and schools and families should be directly informed whether this option has been exercised. At the same time, this situation is exposing how fragmented and ineffective Minnesota’s absenteeism response system truly is: overlapping and poorly defined terms, incomplete data, unclear responsibility across government agencies, and deep distrust from families in crisis, all leaving students caught in the middle. A more coherent, coordinated, and supportive system is needed now more than ever.