Six canvassers with bright green shirts squeezed into a car Saturday morning with a list of addresses and stacks of flyers, moving from one area in Alief to another in search of students who never made it back to school this fall.
At each stop, they spilled out onto sidewalks and apartment walkways, knocking on doors as children rode bicycles nearby. Sometimes no one answered. Other times, a parent or grandparent appeared and offered a clue: a child had transferred to a charter school or moved to another neighborhood.
Alief Independent School District partnered with the Texas nonprofit Groundwork Outreach on Saturday to knock on the doors of families connected to roughly 1,100 students whom district records showed were expected to return this school year but had not enrolled, completed registration or attended their first week. The effort is aimed not only at finding the students, but at understanding what is keeping families from returning and helping those who want to come back navigate enrollment.
The initiative comes as school districts across the Houston region contend with enrollment losses. Districts like Houston ISD lost nearly 4,000 students this school year due to the national immigration crackdown under the Trump administration…