Report finds MA school staff averaged 12 missed days during 2024-25

Sam Drysdale, State House News Sefvice

Mon, December 1, 2025 at 9:46 AM UTC

4 min read

Staff at K-12 public schools in Massachusetts missed an average 12 days of work during the 2024-25 school year, apart from summer vacation and breaks.

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released the staff absenteeism data for the first time on Nov. 18, though Commissioner Pedro Martinez noted it was "not popular" with certain stakeholders.

The data showed that staff in the Milford Public Schools missed an average of 2.6 days in 2024-25. Its 98.5% attendance rate was tops in Worcester County.

"There's a lot of nuance that goes on here, but if you think about a typical 180-day school year, and you have students missing an average 12 days a year, and you have teachers missing an average 12 days a year, for example... In your 180-day school year where students have access to our amazing teachers for high-quality instruction, that number of school days comes down," DESE data chief Rob Curtin said during a board of education meeting on Nov. 18, the day the data was released.

Massachusetts Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Pedro Martinez, center, works on a math problem with sixth graders at Worcester's Belmont Street Community School as Worcester Superintendent of Schools VBrian Allen, standing, looks on. Martinez said that in regards to newly released data on staff and teacher attendance, "Let's understand what it is first, and then also understand the impact it might be having on your student achievement."

A slide projected on a screen showed that if a teacher's missed days and a student's missed days did not overlap, it's possible that the student would only have 156 days of instructional time with their teacher.

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The report defined an absence as "missing more than half of the workday for time that falls outside of paid vacation time or district-approved professional activities."

Teachers at Milford Public Schools averaged a miniscule 1.3 days missed (99.3% attendance) last school year, while the district's 50 administrators averaged 16.4 days missed (92.6% attendance).

DESE staff says data has 'more nuance' than student absences

DESE staff emphasized that the data is not meant to place blame on teachers, and has more nuance to it than student absentee data, as teachers and administrators may have different contractual schedules or excused leaves of absence. Still, they said, it's valuable to evaluate "how it's impacting student learning."

The department has been studying student absenteeism for years, and in the most recent academic year students averaged 12 missed school days. Students who miss more than 10 days are considered "chronically absent," but Curtin said the same designation does not apply to teachers and administrators.

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Student absenteeism has skyrocketed since the pandemic, and state education officials are trying to target the issue with a "Your Presence is Powerful" campaign to raise awareness around attendance.

The first-of-its-kind staff absence data released Nov. 18 showed the 160,000 school administrators, teachers, assistants and other staff who worked in Bay State schools last academic year had a 93.4% attendance rate.

Among administrators, it was 94.5% while among teachers it was 93.5%. That number is similar to student absenteeism numbers, at 93.2%.

"We want our districts to really look at this data," Martinez said. "And, by the way, celebrate it if you're seeing you're well below the average, because I see some of those that are close to zero... And then let's understand the stories of when the numbers are above the average. I always tell superintendents, lead with empathy. Let's understand what it is first, and then also understand the impact it might be having on your student achievement."

DESE says it will investigate validity of certain discrepancies

Among the districts with the highest staff attendance rate, Medford and Wellfleet reported 100%, followed by Brewster and Orleans with 99.9% and 99.8% of staff present at work every day.

On the lower end, Northampton-Smith Vocational Agricultural has a 76.7% staff attendance rate in the data set, followed by Saugus at 82.2% and Lawrence at 83.4%.

Most MetroWest communities were around the state average, with Framingham Public Schools staff posting a 92.8% attendance rate, Marlborough staffers coming in at a 93.3% clip, Natick 93.9% and Franklin at 94.1%.

Curtin and Martinez noted that as DESE makes this reporting an annual routine, they will address questions about whether leave should count towards staff absences, and other discrepancies that could be skewing the data.

"But at the end, what really we want to get down to is we want districts to have ownership of the data and to understand how it's impacting what's happening in their classrooms," Martinez said.

This article originally appeared on The Milford Daily News: Mass. school staff averaged 12 missed days during 2024-25 school year

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