Chalkbeat

New York City’s Education Department is changing how it responds to students who are chronically absent due to school avoidance, according to an agreement officials signed last week with the legal team that filed a class-action lawsuit over the issue. School avoidance, or school refusal as it’s sometimes called, is when students miss large stretches of school because of social or emotional disabilities, such as severe anxiety or depression. The lawsuit, filed in October 2024 on behalf of four students with disabilities who stopped regularly attending school, claimed the nation’s largest school system had no policies or procedures to ensure students received the “free appropriate public education” they were entitled to under federal law. The city spent more than a year hashing out an agreement with attorneys from the Legal Aid Society and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. The agreement signed Friday creates systemwide guidance and support, including a new mandate that every school across the five boroughs designate a school avoidance liaison…