Absenteeism Continues to Drop at Ballston Spa Schools

In the penultimate meeting of the school year, The Ballston Spa Central School District Board of Education heard from three principals regarding their progress on goals set at the beginning of the school year. 

The meeting took place on the night of Jun. 4. Board members heard from the principals of Wood Road Elementary, Malta Avenue Elementary and Ballston Spa High School. A major topic of the meeting was the continued decline in absenteeism in the school system. 

The first to speak was Wood Road Elementary Principal Kelly Cataldo. Cataldo is the shortest tenured principal in the district — having been hired as principal August 2024. In her presentation to the board, Cataldo said she focused her efforts on absenteeism, inclusion, and community engagement among other issues. 

Cataldo said chronic absenteeism —defined by the state as missing 10 percent of school days within one academic year for any reason — at the school has been going down and attendance has remained steady. While this year only saw a 0.4% drop in chronic absenteeism, the number has gone down significantly from 26.5% in the 2021-22 school year. At the same time, the attendance rate remained steady at 93%.

Looking specifically at kindergarten and first grade, where Cataldo said she put much of her focus, chronic absenteeism dropped by about 5%. Cataldo said this change in part was due to efforts by counselors to support students and by teachers to reach out to families at risk of having a student become chronically absent. 

The other major goal Cataldo focused on was inclusion within the school. Cataldo said some of the changes were cosmetic — like a new rug and chairs in the lobby — while others were more student focused. These student focused changes included having classroom teachers nominate a student of the month and highlighting one character trait a month for students to focus on. 

It was a similar story at the high school where principal Matthew Robinson said over the last four years chronic absenteeism has gone down from 32% in 2022 to 26% so far in 2025. Robinson said his strategy to reduce the number was focusing on 40 students (3% of the total) who were on the low end of chronic absenteeism and worked with them specifically. Of these 40 students, Robinson said, 21 are no longer chronically absent while 10 students saw an increase in 10 or more days absent. 

Another major issue that Robinson had focused on this year was the rate of students missing class. According to Robbinson, the total number of skipped classes had gone down from 989 classes skipped in 2022-23 to 700 this year so far. Beyond just the number of total skipped classes, Robinson pointed out the number of students cutting class went from 228 students cutting last year to 184 students cutting class this year. 

Robinson said part of the reason for the decline in skipped classes was due to increased discipline — a strategy Robinson said brought fights down from 54 fights last year to 20 this year. 

To tackle the problem of students cutting classes, the number of warnings was cut by 47%. At the same time, the number of in-school suspensions for cutting class went up by 16% and the number of lunch detentions went up by 21%. Robinson said the increased discipline was specifically focused on repeat offenders. 

“What we do is: if they’re multiple offenders, we increase the punishment,” Robinson said. 

As for why the number of warnings went down, Robinson said this came at the request of teachers in his building. 

“They wanted less warnings,” Robinson said. “The argument was students should know if they’re in high school, they shouldn’t be cutting.” 

Another one of Robinson’s major goals was increasing the number of economically disadvantaged students graduating. Robison’s goal at the beginning of the year was to increase the rate 70% last year to 80% this year.

 Of the 109 economically disadvantaged students who entered the school year this year, 12 dropped out while nine transferred to other schools. Robinson said he won’t know how many of the 88 remaining seniors will graduate. However, his hope is for all of them to graduate and that he is working towards that goal. 

Beyond the reports from the schools, the school boards approved the purchase of several diesel-powered vehicles and one electric school bus.