‘If kids aren’t here, how can they learn?” Rural Southwest Michigan battles to bring back absent students
Some high schoolers miss school because they have been “parentified,” kept home to look after younger siblings while a parent works. Others hold down jobs to help support the family. Others “just don’t want to be here,” Bangor High School Principal Tammy Wilson says. School attendance secretary Hailey Marbut grew up in the area, where school takes a back seat for many teens in families barely scraping by. “They aren’t looking to the future and thinking of, ‘What could I do, where could I go, who could I be?’” she says. “They’re just trying to survive.”
