Most of Franklin County’s public school districts had students in class a little more often during the 2025-26 school year than the year before. The picture comes from new data published by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and reported by the Greenfield Recorder on November 9, 2026, covering all 11 public school districts and supervisory unions in the county.
The gains were modest in most places, and two districts moved in the other direction. But the pattern across the county is consistent with a wider recovery: attendance is climbing back from the sharp declines of the pandemic years, and the sharpest improvements came in the schools that had the furthest to climb.
The county picture at a glance
- Nine of the county’s 11 districts and supervisory unions improved or held steady. Only Hawlemont and Ralph C. Mahar saw attendance rates fall, and both changes were minor.
- Every district in the county sits within two percentage points of the state average attendance rate of 93.6 percent.
- The statewide chronic absenteeism rate stands at 17.1 percent, and several Franklin County schools now sit well below that mark.
- Warwick Community School recorded the largest turnaround in the county, with chronic absenteeism falling from 53.1 percent to 24.1 percent.
- Pioneer Valley Regional posted the county’s highest attendance rate at 95.1 percent, above the state average.
How the state measures attendance
Before the district figures mean anything, it helps to know what the state is counting. Massachusetts reports two related measures, and they describe different things. The attendance rate is the share of enrolled school days on which students were present. The chronic absenteeism rate is the share of students who missed more than 10 percent of the school days they were enrolled to attend. In a traditional 180-day school year, that threshold works out to 18 missed days.
The distinction matters because a district can have a respectable attendance rate while still carrying a high chronic absenteeism rate. If most students attend nearly every day but a smaller group misses a large share of the year, the average looks healthy while the students who are struggling stay hidden inside it. That is why the state’s data reports both figures side by side, and why the most useful reading of the Franklin County numbers looks at both. The state average attendance rate for 2025-26 was 93.6 percent, and the statewide chronic absenteeism rate was 17.1 percent. Every Franklin County district falls within two percentage points of the state attendance average, which means the county as a whole is clustered tightly around the state norm rather than split between strong and weak performers.
The districts that moved the most
Warwick Community School: the largest turnaround
The most striking change in the county belongs to Warwick Community School. Its average attendance rate rose from 89 percent in 2024-25 to 92.6 percent in 2025-26. The bigger shift came in chronic absenteeism, which fell from 53.1 percent to 24.1 percent in a single year. That is still above the state average of 17.1 percent, but the direction and the scale of the change stand out from every other district in the county.
Principal Stephen Stroud credited staffing changes for the improvement. The school created a family liaison position, and Stroud said the role made a notable difference for families facing systemic barriers to getting children to school. The school also built a dashboard to track which families needed to be contacted, and its leadership team met regularly to review the data and decide who the liaison should reach out to next.
The school added further layers around the same idea. Student-led family conferences are held twice a year, and attendance was brought directly into those conversations, so classroom teachers as well as the family liaison were talking with families about getting to school.
Rowe Elementary: three more days in school
Rowe Elementary School also posted a sharp improvement. Its students were in school an average of three days more last academic year than the year before. The attendance rate rose from 91.5 percent in 2024-25 to 93.4 percent in 2025-26, with students missing an average of 11.7 days compared with 14.7 days the year before.
The chronic absenteeism figures moved even more dramatically. In 2025-26, 8.8 percent of Rowe students were considered chronically absent, down from 27.1 percent the year before.
Pioneer Valley: the county’s highest attendance
Pioneer Valley Regional School District posted the best attendance in the county for 2025-26, with a rate of 95.1 percent. That is higher than the state average and an improvement on the previous year. Superintendent Patricia Kinsella described it as a success story for a small district, and the district’s chronic absenteeism rate also improved slightly, to 11.8 percent.
Kinsella said school principals focused on meeting with teachers about attendance and finding ways to intervene before students were counted as chronically absent. The district found that for high schoolers who were chronically absent, many of their attendance problems dated back to elementary school, so reaching students and families early was part of the strategy.
The district also worked on school culture. Investments in athletics, arts and other extracurricular activities gave students more reasons to want to be at school, Kinsella said, and the district plans to continue those efforts, particularly in reaching students who are chronically absent. Her stated goal is ambitious: she said she wants zero percent of the district’s students to be chronically absent.
Franklin Tech: shop classes that pull students in
Franklin County Technical School had a 94.8 percent attendance rate for 2025-26, roughly the same as the previous school year’s rate of exactly 94 percent. Its chronic absenteeism rate declined from 2024-25 and now stands at 10.7 percent, comfortably better than the state average.
Principal Brian Spadafino pointed to the enjoyment students find in their shop classes as a factor in attendance. The school holds parent and student meetings to address cases of chronic absenteeism, and Spadafino described attendance as the greatest indicator of student success.
Union 28: steady improvement across four schools
Within Erving School Union 28, chronic absenteeism rates fell at all four elementary schools: Erving, Leverett, Shutesbury and Swift River. Swift River saw the largest decline, with its chronic absenteeism rate dropping from 18.2 percent in 2024-25 to 11.3 percent in 2025-26, alongside an attendance rate of 94.6 percent.
Erving was the one school in the union where attendance dipped slightly, but its rate of 93.6 percent exactly matches the state average. Erving Elementary remains the only school in the supervisory union still above the state average for chronic absenteeism, at 20.8 percent for 2025-26.
The two districts that slipped
Not every district improved. Hawlemont Regional School District saw its attendance rate ease from 94.1 percent in 2024-25 to 93.5 percent in 2025-26, with students missing an average of 10.9 days. Principal Amber Tulloch described attendance as a balancing act: families should keep children home when they are sick, while also making sure children are present whenever possible. Hawlemont has used a monthly class attendance award for the past two years, sponsored by the Parent-Teacher Organization with class prizes, which Tulloch said motivates students while still allowing grace for illness.
Ralph C. Mahar Regional School District saw the larger decline. Its attendance rate fell from 92.7 percent to 91.7 percent, the lowest in the county, and its chronic absenteeism rate rose from 17.7 percent to 26.7 percent. Students at Mahar missed an average of 14.4 days during the school year. The figures are worse than the district’s pre-pandemic levels: chronic absenteeism stood at 9.1 percent in 2017-18 before soaring to 61.1 percent in 2020-21.
Superintendent Elizabeth Zielinski said chronic absenteeism remains an area of concern at Mahar, and that the district is working with students, families, teachers and support staff to understand the barriers that keep students from attending regularly. She stressed that the goal is not simply to improve a statistic, but to make sure every student feels connected to school and supported in their education.
What the districts say is working
Look across the county’s reports and a few themes repeat. The first is early contact. Pioneer Valley intervenes before students reach the chronic-absence threshold. Frontier Regional has turned its attention to individual students who miss school consistently, trying to understand why each one is absent rather than running a single sweeping initiative. Greenfield holds weekly attendance meetings at each school, and when needed, schools visit families at home to talk through problems such as transport.
The second theme is family partnership. Warwick built its improvement around a family liaison and regular data review, and brought attendance into student-led family conferences. Sunderland Elementary launched a new initiative this year called Every Day Counts at Sunderland, which works with families to break down the roadblocks students face in getting to school every day. Gill-Montague has put counselors through professional development on addressing attendance as part of its goals for the current academic year.
The third theme is honesty about what is not yet fixed. Gill-Montague’s overall chronic absenteeism rate improved from 22.2 percent to 19.8 percent, and its attendance rate rose to 93.3 percent, with students missing an average of 11.8 days compared with 12.7 the year before. But the district is still working on a harder problem: 29.2 percent of its students with disabilities were chronically absent in 2025-26, down from 32.5 percent the year before, yet still far above the district average. The district’s teaching and learning director said plainly that the district does not want almost 30 percent of its students with disabilities to be chronically absent, and that there is still a lot of work to do there.
Greenfield tells a similar story of progress with work remaining. Its attendance rate rose slightly to 92.2 percent, and its chronic absenteeism rate fell to 24.8 percent, improving steadily since a peak of 45.1 percent in 2021-22. Assistant Superintendent Stephen Sullivan called the improvements worthy of celebration while adding that there is still significant work to do.
Frontier Regional offers the longest view in the county. Its attendance rate reached 93.6 percent in 2025-26, and its chronic absenteeism rate fell to 14.4 percent, a real recovery from 26.2 percent in 2021-22, even though it has not yet returned to the 10.6 percent recorded in 2019-20. Superintendent Darius Modestow said the district is trending in the right direction and that students are in a healthier place overall.
The full district-by-district breakdown, with the state figures behind each school’s results, is set out in the Greenfield Recorder’s report on the county’s attendance data.
What the numbers still leave open
Three cautions are worth keeping in mind when reading the county’s results. The first is scale. Franklin County’s districts are small, and a handful of students can move a whole district’s rate. Mohawk Trail’s superintendent made the point directly: the district’s attendance rate rose only marginally, from 93.2 percent to 93.4 percent, while chronic absenteeism edged up from 18 percent to 18.5 percent, and in a small district one or two students on long-term medical leave can change the picture.
The second caution is the gap to pre-pandemic levels. Frontier’s chronic absenteeism rate of 14.4 percent is better than its pandemic peak but still above its 2019-20 figure of 10.6 percent. Greenfield’s 24.8 percent is well below its peak but above its 2017-18 level. The recovery is real, but in most districts it is not yet complete.
The third caution is who is still being missed. Gill-Montague’s figures for students with disabilities show that averages can hide the groups facing the steepest barriers. A county-wide improvement is good news, and it is also compatible with some students still missing far too much school.
How families can keep track at home
District data is published once a year, but a family’s own attendance picture changes week by week. The most useful thing a parent or student can do is track the percentage, not just the number of days missed. A student who has missed 9 days out of 90 has missed 10 percent of the school year and sits exactly on the chronic-absence threshold, even though 9 days may not sound alarming on its own. The arithmetic is simple: count the school days missed so far, divide by the school days held so far, and multiply by 100.
The wider context is encouraging. Chronic absenteeism has been falling across 21 states, and Franklin County’s results fit that national pattern of recovery. Mississippi, for example, recently reported a 24 percent fall in total student absences in the first two months of its school year.
What is the state average attendance rate in Massachusetts?
The state average attendance rate for the 2025-26 school year was 93.6 percent. Every Franklin County district sits within two percentage points of that average, with Pioneer Valley Regional highest at 95.1 percent and Ralph C. Mahar lowest at 91.7 percent.
What counts as chronic absenteeism in Massachusetts?
A student is counted as chronically absent when they miss more than 10 percent of the school days they were enrolled to attend. In a traditional 180-day school year, that works out to 18 missed days. The statewide chronic absenteeism rate for 2025-26 was 17.1 percent.
Which Franklin County district improved the most?
Warwick Community School recorded the largest turnaround. Its chronic absenteeism rate fell from 53.1 percent in 2024-25 to 24.1 percent in 2025-26, while its attendance rate rose from 89 percent to 92.6 percent. The school credits a new family liaison position, a tracking dashboard and regular leadership review of the data.
Which districts saw attendance fall?
Only two of the county’s 11 districts and supervisory unions saw attendance rates drop: Hawlemont, from 94.1 percent to 93.5 percent, and Ralph C. Mahar, from 92.7 percent to 91.7 percent. Mahar also saw chronic absenteeism rise from 17.7 percent to 26.7 percent.
How can families track whether a student is at risk of chronic absence?
Count the school days missed so far, divide by the school days held so far, and multiply by 100. A result at or above 10 percent means the student has reached the chronic-absence threshold. A free attendance percentage calculator can do the same arithmetic instantly and track it across a term.
Franklin County’s 2025-26 attendance data shows a county moving in the right direction, with the biggest gains in the schools that had the most ground to recover. The work is not finished: rates in several districts remain above pre-pandemic levels, and some groups of students are still missing far more school than their peers. Families who want to keep an eye on their own numbers can use the free attendance percentage calculator to track attendance across the term and spot a problem while there is still time to act.
