GUILFORD COUNTY, N.C. — When you hear about missing kids, a lot of questions come to mind.
What happened? Are my kids safe?
Those are questions some Triad school districts are trying to answer after thousands of their students haven't been back to school since the pandemic.
WFMY News 2's Amber Lake learned more about how these "missing" students are identified and what they're doing to bring them back into the classroom.
Last year, 5,000 kids were unaccounted for in Winston-Salem/Forsyth county schools.
That’s a huge number!
This year it's less, but it's still a lot. At the beginning of the summer, it was 3,000 students missing. Thankfully, the school system was able to find many of them and now that number is down to 1,000, but there's still more that needs to be done.
'It is vital that all of our students are in school," the director of family engagement, Ronda Mays said.
There are nearly 1,000 students unaccounted for in Winston-Salem /Forsyth county schools for the 2022-2023 school year.
"We want to make certain that every student that was assigned to our district that we know where they are," Mays said.
The school district is making a plea to the community.
Shelia Thorp, student services, director of school social work said it's not only imperative that these students stay in school, but they finish so that they can gain access to a better life.
"The most important thing is that we get these kids in school, keep them in school, and make sure they graduate because that’s their key to a better life," Thorp expressed.
The district uses a power school database to show student absentees.
Assistant Superintendent Dr. Fredricca Stokes said the attendance for high school students may be an even bigger issue, especially when some students are old enough to drop out.
"High school is a big concern because those students are old enough to legally drop out, Dr. Stokes said.
Hope Davis, 'Teach Tech U' founder, chief technology officer and program administrator has partnered with the school district to assist in the search for these students.
"Our main goal is to help the district to locate those students who are missing, unenrolled, and those who are suffering from chronic absenteeism, so the district can focus there and school interventions to help the students once they return," Davis said.
They do this by going into the community, using investigative tools, district rosters, and GIS mapping to try and find the students.
"We are going to do something innovative, something we have not done before, and we are able to do this because a grant that we received from the state," Mays said.
Alamance/Burlington schools tell us they have 231 unaccounted-for students this year.
We reached out to Guilford County Schools who say they are also searching for missing students but didn't give us a number on how many.