“While absenteeism rates for high-income students are leveling off, rates for low-income students have continued to worsen since the spring,” the report added.

“What we know,” Dr. Chang said, “is that chronic absence is exacerbating existing inequities.”

For school districts, attendance is a knotty problem. Showing up to class is fundamental to learning, but schools have little control over absences and solving the problem is not easy. Chronic absenteeism can stem from a variety of issues including instability at home, work obligations or illness.

Now, unsettled by the continuing shock waves of a pandemic, even more students appear to be falling through the cracks. And district employees — stretched increasingly thin by understaffing and absences of their own — are grasping for creative ways to lure students back.