Speaking at the Bronx’s Walton Campus earlier this month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg pointed to truancy as an accurate indicator of future academic struggle.

“The more school a child misses during the early grades, the more unlikely for him or her to succeed in the higher grades,” he said.

Bloomberg went on to announce the expansion of a limited city mentorship program that he credits with improving absenteeism at participating schools, including the High School for Teaching and the Professions, one of several small schools at Walton in Kingsbridge Heights.

After the first year of the program, absenteeism dropped at Teaching and the Professions (also known as TAP) more than any of the six other participating high schools. According to figures from the mayor’s office, the school cut chronic absenteeism from 52 percent to 41 percent.

The city calls students who missed more than 20 days “chronically absent,” while those who missed more than 38 days were “severely chronically absent.”

In total, Bloomberg said students participating in the mentorship program attended 7,000 more days of class compared to the previous year.

Bloomberg said the city’s “Success Mentors” program, part of the its more comprehensive “Every Student, Every Day” anti-truancy effort, will expand this year to include about 4,000 students, up from 1,400 during the 2010-2011 school year.

There will also be a new focus on helping students returning to school after long stints away in juvenile detention facilities, temporary housing or foster care. The city has also expanded a wake-up call program it says has proved effective.

Thomas Lopez, the program coordinator at TAP, said there was still room for improvement. The school sits at under 83 percent attendance for the year, while the city wants high schools to have at least an 85 percent attendance rate, he said. Lopez said the school is enlisting 30 additional peer mentors to supplement the city’s program.

The city has trained 300 new mentors, from many local organizations and colleges, including BuildOn and the Lehman College School of Social Work, to help students get through the day to day grind.

Mentors greet students every day, call them and their parents if they miss school, help them get extra tutoring or resources and generally help them stay on task and in class.

“Being a part of this program gave me a sense of stability and I feel like I am part of a family here at the High School for Teaching and the Professions,” said senior Jean Robinson.

Elisia Young, a guidance counselor at Walton who is also a mentor, said it takes compassion to reach students. “When they come in through the front door, you don’t know what they’re day has consisted of,” she said. “If the compassion is not there, they feel far removed from you.”