Hawaii's statewide chronic absenteeism rate has fallen from a pandemic peak of 37% to 24%. At the state level, 59% of the COVID disruption has been recovered. That sounds like progress.

But zoom in to the school level and the picture is far grimmer. Of 291 schools with data spanning 2019 to 2025, just 22 have returned to their pre-pandemic chronic absenteeism rate. That is 7.6% of schools.

The other 269 schools still have higher chronic absence rates than before COVID hit.

The Recovery That Didn't Reach Most Schools

The 22 recovered schools are a mix of small charter schools and scattered traditional schools. Na Wai Ola Public Charter School leads the group, dropping from a 40% chronic rate in 2019 to just 3% in 2025, a 37-point improvement that puts it far below its pre-pandemic level. Kanuikapono Public Charter School went from 21% to 1%. Maunaloa Elementary on Molokai went from 15% to 2%.

But these are the exceptions. At the other end of the spectrum, 133 schools (45.7% of the total) are running chronic absenteeism rates 10 or more percentage points above their 2019 levels. Twenty-eight schools are 20 or more points worse. Connections PCS has gone from 23% to 59%, a 36-point increase. Palolo Elementary jumped from 12% to 40%.

The Hardest Cases

The schools farthest from recovery share a pattern in the data: their chronic absenteeism rates climbed the most after 2019, and they have not come back down.

School	2019 Rate	2025 Rate	Excess
Connections PCS	23%	59%	+36pp
Palolo Elementary	12%	40%	+28pp
Iroquois Point Elementary	12%	40%	+28pp
Kaunakakai Elementary	11%	37%	+26pp
Ha'aheo Elementary	9%	35%	+26pp
Pahoa Elementary	22%	47%	+25pp

Schools that were in the single digits or low teens before the pandemic, rates that suggested healthy attendance cultures, have settled into the 30s and 40s. These are not schools returning slowly to normal. They have established a new, much worse baseline.

The State Average Masks School Reality

The disconnect between state-level recovery (59%) and school-level recovery (7.6%) reveals how state averages can mislead. The state calculation compares rates at the aggregate level, where improvements at large schools can offset stagnation at smaller ones. The school-level count asks a simpler and more revealing question: how many schools are actually back to where they were?

The answer, 22, means that for the vast majority of Hawaii's school communities, the attendance disruption caused by COVID is still the reality. It is not receding. It has become the new normal.

The scatter of school-level rates shows the pattern clearly: nearly every school sits above the diagonal line where pre-COVID and current rates would be equal. The cluster of schools that spiked from single-digit rates to the 20s and 30s represents the broad middle of Hawaii's education system, where chronic absenteeism was once manageable and is now endemic.

The uncomfortable implication: 269 schools may not be on a path back to their pre-COVID norms. They may already be at their new norms.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.