Program aims to lower student absenteeism
The district attorney’s office and school administrators in Franklin County and Russellville are participating in a program which aims to address truancy and chronic absenteeism among students.
The Helping Families Initiative (HFI) is a state program that more than half of the judicial circuits in Alabama have joined. The program’s goal is to improve attendance by connecting students and their families with community resources.
Franklin County, Russellville City, Sheffield, Tuscumbia and Muscle Shoals city schools and Colbert County schools are the only local school districts involved in the program, which began in 2003 in Mobile County.
Alabama’s Mandatory School Attendance Act addresses compulsory school.
Parents or guardians are legally responsible for ensuring their child’s enrollment, attendance, and behavior. Failure to do so may result in penalties, including fines, costs, or 90 days hard labor. The act also places the responsibility of enforcing compulsory school attendance on school officials, attendance officers, and the legal system.
The superintendent of education and the school principals are required to report suspected truancy and absenteeism violations to the district attorney within 10 days.
Participation in the program is an attempt to help students and their parents or guardians overcome issues leading to truancy or chronic absenteeism before they trigger intervention efforts by the juvenile justice system.
“HFI is also a crime prevention initiative,” Colbert County District Attorney Hal Hughston said last week during a meeting announcing Colbert’s involvement in the HFI program. “There’s a direct correlation between the two.”
A report prepared for the Alabama Legislature in September 2025 indicated that schools participating in HFI are benefiting from those efforts. The report compared absenteeism rates for 2023 and 2024.
For example, the absenteeism rate for Franklin County schools of 6.63% in 2023 was reduced to 6.28% in 2024. Russellville City Schools saw its absenteeism rate drop from 5.55% in 2023 to 4.98% in 2024.
The COVID pandemic at the start of this decade allowed students to enjoy the convenience of staying home where they did their work online, and parents got some relief from the inconvenience of having to get their children ready and take them to school each day.
But there was a much more important lesson learned. The pandemic showed that learning without a classroom environment poses challenges. Studies since COVID have shown the more time a student is in class directly impacts their grades.
Chronic absenteeism can also reduce a student’s chances of getting his or her high school diploma. Statistics from the Helping Families Initiative website drive home that message: Students who average 5 to 9 days of absenteeism per school year have a 63% chance of graduating.
Students who miss on average 10 to 14 days of school per year have a 41% chance of graduating.
Students who miss 15 to 19 days of school per year have just a 21% chance of graduating.
There’s also the crime prevention angle. The HFI website states chronic truants are 12 times as likely to commit a serious assault, and 21 times as likely to commit a serious property crime as nontruants.
The statistics and the benefits participating schools are seeing are solid reasons why Franklin County and Russellville City school officials and the Franklin County District Attorney’s office should be applauded for being a part of this statewide effort.
