001Our attendance committee has been amazing in impacting attendance. When I arrived here, um, this is my [music] third year, our chronic absenteeism was at 26%. And at this point, we're under 14 and that's been a lots and lots of work. Each member of the attendance team is assigned a grade level. So we get to build relationships with the kids within that grade and create goals with the kids who are chronically absent and put things in place [music] to encourage them and motivate them to come to school. I think it's really been having a more personal connection with the family and also making sure they know that we care about their students coming into the school. We help families [music] with food, clothing, housing support, connecting with medical resources, anything to help the families and caregivers
002feel that they're [music] supported. We spread the work out and we're like dividing all that work, doing that constant outreach, [music] not coming to them with this is the issue, but more like how can we support you guys? >> So, we have a list of kids who might be struggling with their attendance for a variety of reasons. Uh, and it kind of lets us [music] catch those kids early. And what we've seen is with these initiatives, that list has gotten a lot shorter. We [music] were previously like in the red for the state. And not only did we really reduce that percentage, but we're totally off the watch list now. >> In third [music] grade, I wouldn't really come a lot to school cuz I thought it wouldn't really help me in anything. But now
003in fifth grade, I learned that I need to come to school every day to learn to help me with my future in middle school, high school, and college. We began as a group just talking about and looking at the root causes for the absences of our students and in doing so learn a lot about what to put in place to motivate them to want [music] to come to school. >> So sometimes they do like donuts like little cards if you get the perfect attendance awards [music] which just makes you come to school more. Making students aware of how important school is by giving them incentives [music] really helps in them being a lifelong learner. >> If you miss out about school, you're not really you're not really going to know what's happening. >> It's important
004to come to school because it'll show that you want to learn and like you're making the teachers feel like, oh, they want to come to school, I should teach them. It shows that you care to come to [music] school and like that you want to have a good grade. hearing them talk about attendance in itself. [music] Three years ago when I first came in here, there was a lot of students, a lot throughout the school that didn't [music] even know what that word meant. Now they know what it is. They have it in their [snorts] vocabulary. It's definitely [music] changed the culture of our school. Sometimes parents don't feel that partnership with the school, but we want to make sure that we're highlighting that we do want to have a partnership with them that it's
005a teamwork. [screaming] >> Chronic absenteeism is something that we've been struggling with at our school. And so last year, we really made a big emphasis on collecting data. >> Monthly, we track each barrier to attendance. So we have a list of all the different barriers to attendance that we [music] know. So we'll log those things, right? So we can say for this month the number one [music] barrier to attendance was employment. >> We all came together. We decided to have a chronic [music] absenteeism group. So that really takes a lot of energy and a lot of effort and it's just a testament [music] to their commitment to make this experience better. So, one of the incentives is to give our students [music] an option for transportation, whether it be through using the metro or [music]
006if they're driving, um, we can provide parking for them. We have an assembly every month where we celebrate students who have [music] perfect attendance, um, classes who have the best attendance, um, based on each period, and um, it's like a friendly competition, right? So, people really get involved in it. us getting recognized that we're doing good and that we're going to class has helped. >> I have like uh six certificates and I feel like um proud of me. I know that this is something that is going to help me in the future to improve myself. It very much warms my heart and [music] I look forward to every month looking at every student's attendance and [music] seeing like who who's going to be recognized. >> So it means a lot for me because [music] if
007more students are coming to school that means more students are graduating. If more students in our school honestly community high school are graduating [music] that's a good thing. That's a great thing. >> I always like doubted myself and see like and say like I can't you know go to school [music] on time or you know can't go to school at all. But like this shows me that I can actually really do it.