Thirty percent. That was my attendance rate as a high school senior.
Mental health struggles made showing up feel impossible, a cycle my younger brother also faced. But without a safety net, he fell through. He never graduated, and his subsequent death by suicide is the reason I now stand before the Utah Legislature.
Today, I’m an English teacher in Utah. As a former attendance interventionist, I’ve seen how post-COVID rollbacks dismantled attendance enforcement. When we allow a student to disappear from our rosters, we lose our best chance to intervene in a mental health crisis. In Utah, where suicide is a leading cause of youth death, school is often the only safety net a child has.
I went to the Capitol because I cannot teach a student who isn’t there. We need laws that fund tiered interventions and restore parental accountability.
To my fellow educators: Your "boots on the ground" reality is what moves representatives. Please, reach out to your local representative. They need to hear that for many students, "showing up" is the first step toward staying alive.
