Waterbury — It's early March, and Alejandra, a junior at Crosby High School, has already missed nearly two dozen days of school this year.

Sometimes she's had a good explanation — a family trip, a minor illness. Other times, she just hasn't quite felt like going. Having grown up in Puerto Rico, she speaks little English and struggles in her ESL class, which she is currently failing. She has battled anxiety since witnessing masked men attack and kill her sister's friend inside her home in Puerto Rico. Recently, new neighbors moved in above her family and have been making noise at night, preventing Alexa from sleeping well.

"It's not that I don't like school," Alejandra said in Spanish, on the afternoon she missed her 22nd day of class. "It's just that right now I feel a lot of anxiety and stress, and I don't understand a lot of things."

In many ways, she isn't alone. In Connecticut and elsewhere, chronic absence — defined as missing at least 10 percent of school days — surged during the COVID-19 pandemic and has remained high since, as students face increased rates of anxiety and depression and feel less connected than ever to their schools and communities.

To combat this problem, Connecticut in 2021 launched the Learner Engagement and Attendance Program, or LEAP, which funds outreach workers in 14 districts who work with chronically absent students and their families to improve attendance. Unlike in past generations, the goal isn't to shame or punish students and parents who miss school but to work with them on the underlying issues affecting their attendance.

In Alejandra's case, she and her mother, Lucia, meet regularly with an outreach specialist from the school, who reviews her grades, asks about absences and helps the family address problems that contribute to keeping her out of school. When necessary, the specialist will refer Alejandra to programs or counseling services she thinks might be helpful.

Lucia, who along with Alejandra is being identified by a pseudonym, says LEAP has helped her daughter manage her anxiety and gain confidence in school. And statewide, the results have been promising as well: A study from the Center for Connecticut Education Research Collaboration found that LEAP increased attendance 15 percentage points for students engaged in the program during the 2021-22 school year.

LEAP has also gained national recognition for its successes, and last month Gov. Ned Lamont touted the initiative in his State of the State speech, pledging state money to make it a permanent part of the state's budget. On a recent visit to Connecticut, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona praised the state as "leading the pack" in promoting school attendance.

Chronic absence is a complex problem that challenged districts nationwide before the pandemic hit and has often overwhelmed them in the years since. At times, it has felt unsolvable. Has Connecticut found itself an answer?

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LEAP emerged nearly three years ago from a genuine crisis of attendance.

From 2018-19, the last full school year before the pandemic, to 2021-22, chronic absence in Connecticut more than doubled, state data shows, from 10.4 percent of students to 23.7 percent. Though numbers rose everywhere, the spike was particularly pronounced in the state's poorest districts, where rates sometimes exceeded 50 percent.

Waterbury Public Schools represents as good an example as any. The district went from 15.6 percent of students chronically absent in 2018-19 to 47.8 percent in 2020-21, when remote schooling sapped much of the structure from students' lives. That year Crosby High School, where Alejandra attends, had 73.5 percent of its students chronically absent.

"We saw that chronic absence rates were going in the wrong direction, especially for remote learners," recalls Kari Sullivan-Custer, an education consultant with the State Department of Education. "We were concerned about the disengaged students and their families."

Using federal pandemic-relief funds, the state designed and launched LEAP, in collaboration with the national nonprofit Attendance Works and other groups. Officials chose 14 districts to participate, selecting them based on their rates of chronic absence, the extent to which they'd relied on remote learning and the prevalence of disabled students there.

At Crosby, the LEAP team includes seven outreach specialists, all of whom work at the school full-time in other roles, and is overseen by program director Cathleen Newmark, an assistant principal. In three years of the program, they have met with hundreds of families, both in homes and at school, and encountered a wide range of issues: not only poor grades and behavioral issues but also homelessness, pregnancy and serious mental health needs.

Unlike old-school truancy officers, LEAP specialists form close relationships with students and parents and funnel them toward services, such as after-school tutoring, housing assistance or health care. In many cases, specialists become counselors and confidantes for struggling students.

"What we see here at Crosby is just the relationship-building," Newmark said. "Parents feel like they have somebody that they can contact at the school, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with attendance."

Spanish-speaking Crosby students often meet with Katherine Plaza, an energetic educator originally from Puerto Rico who has taught in Waterbury for five years and been involved in LEAP for the last two.

Even before LEAP started, Plaza was known to look out for Spanish-speaking students at the school. LEAP just made that role official.

"One of the reasons I chose to be a teacher is because you can help in some many ways," Plaza said. "And then LEAP was another extension of getting students who aren't in my classes, so I can help all the Spanish-speaking population."

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Alejandra has met with LEAP specialists since fall 2022, and her mother says she has noticed a difference. Previously, the teenager hardly wanted to do anything. Now, she has energy and confidence and practices her flute so much Lucia sometimes begs her to stop. Still, Alejandra has continued to miss school regularly, and no one can quite pinpoint why.

For a LEAP visit in March, Alejandra and Lucia wend through the halls of Crosby High School to Newmark's office, where they sit across from an Plaza and begin reviewing Alejandra's grades. Passing marks in most classes — including an A in band — but a failing grade in advanced ESL.

Over time, the LEAP team has noticed a pattern in Alejandra's absences. On days when the school uses its "A" schedule and Alejandra has band and a history class taught by Plaza, she rarely misses school. When the school uses its "B" schedule and she has ESL, she's absent frequently.

In Newmark's office, Plaza gently quizzes Alejandra on what has made her ESL class so difficult. Is the material too complex? Does she not like the teacher? Alejandra replies in a quiet, polite voice. English is just hard for her, she says, particularly in class, where she's nervous to make mistakes.

Alejandra has been feeling anxious lately, which concerns Plaza, who thought that issue had been improving. Teacher, student and mother talk back and forth for a few minutes about the root of the anxiety, until Lucia offers something she'd seemingly been reluctant to share. The family has new neighbors upstairs, and they've been doing "cosas indeseadas" — unwanted things — that keep Alejandra and her sister up at night and sometimes conjure painful memories from Puerto Rico.

"When they see what is happening through the window, when they hear the noise, they don't sleep," Lucia said in Spanish. "It's because they're afraid."

Plaza hands Alejandra a form asking her to explain briefly why she's had absence issues and what she plans to do about it. Typically, a student who misses more than 20 days in a school year faces risk of losing credit, but the form tells Alejandra that if she continues working with Plaza and other outreach specialists, they will waive that rule.

"Sometimes school stresses me out," Alejandra writes on the form, in Spanish. "Sometimes I can't sleep because I see unsafe things."

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Connecticut's chronic absence numbers have improved since LEAP was introduced, and the district-level figures suggest the program is making a difference. Sullivan-Custer sees the progress in monthly data reports.

"We're getting rid of the shame and blame of missing school," she said. "We are sending the right kind of people with training to engage our families in individual relationships so that they have someone to talk to."

In late 2022, researchers from the University of Connecticut, Wesleyan University and Central Connecticut State University reported a "significant increase" in attendance for students involved with LEAP, as compared to a control group. The effect was long-lasting, they found, continuing up to six months after the initial intervention.

The program, the researchers reported, was "clearly effective."

Though other states and local districts have attempted similar interventions to curb chronic absence, Connecticut is considered a leader on the issue, touted in the New York Times, Education Week and ProPublica, among other places, for its success in improving attendance.

Even so, the state's mission is hardly accomplished: Across Connecticut, 20 percent of students were chronically absent during the 2022-23 school year, nearly twice the state's pre-pandemic figure. In Hartford, that number is 38.9 percent, in New Britain it's 37.8 percent, in New Haven it's 36.6 percent, and in Waterbury it's 31.2 percent.

And so as other Connecticut initiatives funded with pandemic-relief money are phased out, LEAP appears likely to continue. Lamont included the program in his recent budget proposal as a permanent line item, at a cost of $7 million.

That's welcome news to Newmark, who shudders to imagine wrangling hundreds of absent students at Crosby without a team of LEAP specialists.

"I don't know how we would support our students without this program," she said. "I truly don't."

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As their meeting in Newmark's office winds down, Plaza suggests therapy might help Alejandra and offers to refer her to a local program that provides wellness services to children and young adults. Alejandra and her mother agree that's a good idea.

Plaza and Newmark also suggest Alejandra apply for a summer job, which would get her out of the house and offer a chance to practice English. They can help with an application, they tell her.

After the meeting, Lucia grows tearful discussing her family's background, including the attack that drove them to leave Puerto Rico and start over in Connecticut. Asked about the impact LEAP has had on not only Alejandra but also on her older sister, Lucia practically explodes with praise for the program — and for Plaza in particular.

"She is always looking out for them. Always, always, always," Lucia says. "I feel the help, I feel that someone is lending us a hand in this position we are in."

Before saying good-bye, Alejandra and Lucia agree to meet with Plaza a bit more frequently, to closely monitor Alejandra's grades, attendance and mental health.

As mother and daughter leave the school, their problems aren't gone, but they don't feel alone in solving them.