Massachusetts K-12 public school teachers and staff missed an average of about 12 days in the 2024-25 school year, according to new state data.

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released attendance data for all staff at public K-12 schools in the state at a board meeting Tuesday, the first time the state has released this type of data.

On the state level, teachers missed an average of 11.7 days of the 2024-25 school year and administrators missed 11.3 days, according to the data. All school staff, including positions like paraprofessionals and support staff, missed an average of 11.9 days.

Each category averaged an attendance rate of around 93% to 94%, the state data showed.

As for students, absences are defined as missing more than half of the workday for a reason that falls outside of paid school vacation time or district-approved professional development activity.

The staff data was about on par with student attendance, which also was an average statewide of about 93% or 11.9 days in the 2024-25 school year, according to DESE data.

State officials noted the importance of this data when thinking about the impact of absences on students’ education.

“When we think about the reason, when we think about the importance of attendance at school, I think we can agree that there’s nothing more important than students having access to not only teachers, but all staff in their schools, and all the services that our schools can offer,” said Rob Curtin, DESE chief data officer.

In Boston Public Schools, teachers missed an average of 10.7 days in the 2024-25 school year, the data showed. Administrators were absent 12.2 days on average, and all staff were absent 11.5 days.

BPS saw lower attendance rates for students in the 2024-25 school year, at 90% or an average of 17.2 days missed per student. Thirty-three percent of students in BPS were chronically absent, missing at least 10% of the school year, according to the data.

The BPS attendance is an improvement from the previous 2023-24 school year, at 89.5% attendance rate and 34.6% chronically absent.

The Massachusetts Teachers Association urged state officials to use the new data to “ensure educators and students are receiving the resources and support that they need.”

“The vast majority of districts show an educator attendance rate of well over 90%,” said MTA President Max Page and Vice President Deb McCarthy. “But this data does not reflect the reasons why educators take time off and cannot be used in any punitive way against educators.”

The union emphasized the roll of “school safety and the ability of educators to care for themselves and their family members” in attendance, advocating for paid family leave and student mental health resources.

DESE Commissioner Pedro Martinez said the release of the staff data was “not popular,” but “districts need to analyze this information to see what the impact is.”

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For districts across the state, most ranged between an average of 0 and 20 absences in the last school year. The range went a little higher for administrators, with some districts having an average of 40 days. In one district, Northampton-Smith Vocational Agricultural, administrators were absent an average of 57.9 days.

“I really wanted for this first year to be, ‘Let’s understand it, and let’s get into a cadence of reporting it,’” said Martinez. … “At the end, what really we want to get down to is… districts to have ownership of the data and to understand how it’s impacting what’s happening in their classrooms.”