Connecticut will distribute $6.2 million to 29 school districts for home visits and other efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism during the 2026-27 school year, expanding a program that began as an emergency response to pandemic-era disengagement.
The awards are part of a dedicated $7 million state budget line for the Learner Engagement and Attendance Program, known as LEAP. The remaining funds will support statewide training, implementation and data work, according to the Sept. 30 announcement from Gov. Ned Lamont and Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker.
The largest grants include $525,000 for Waterbury, $500,000 for Hartford, $475,000 for Bridgeport, $425,000 for New Haven and $350,000 for Stamford. The list also reaches smaller systems, including Norwich, New London, Windham and Winchester. Each district is expected to use trained staff or community partners to contact families, identify barriers to attendance and connect students with school and community supports.
What the evidence shows
LEAP started in 2021 with 15 districts, later grew to 25 and now reaches 29. State officials say the program has logged about 88,000 home visits and reached roughly 53,000 students. Connecticut’s statewide chronic-absence rate fell from 23.7% in 2021-22 to 16.4% in 2025-26, meaning nearly 35,000 more students attended regularly than four years earlier. Those statewide figures show improvement, but they do not by themselves prove that LEAP caused the entire decline.
A University of Connecticut evaluation used a difference-in-differences design to compare participating students with similar peers. It found that students visited during the school year improved attendance by about 10 percentage points six months later, on average. High school participants showed gains exceeding 15 percentage points after nine months, while summer participants improved by about five points. The researchers cautioned that small samples limited some district-level estimates.
The state’s chronic-absence guidance defines the issue as missing 10% or more of enrolled school days, for any reason. That measure matters because it captures repeated absences that may not trigger traditional truancy responses but can still disrupt learning. LEAP’s approach is built around relationship-based outreach rather than enforcement alone.
What districts and families should expect
For districts, the grants provide money for trained home visitors, coordination and follow-up rather than a one-time attendance campaign. For families, participation typically begins with direct outreach aimed at understanding transportation, health, housing, school-climate or other barriers. The program page says in-person home or school visits have generally produced stronger results than virtual or phone-only contact.
Families do not need to wait for a formal truancy case to encounter the program; local teams can intervene when recurring absences begin to threaten a student’s progress.
The expansion arrives as Connecticut continues to track attendance as a statewide recovery measure. The new grants increase LEAP’s reach, but the next test is whether districts can sustain the measured gains across a larger and more varied group of communities.
