001welcome USD 264 uh stakeholders staff parents and anyone that's watching this on YouTube uh this is our Clearwater uh Clarity update our superintendent update for September of 2024 and this is volume uh 12 so again just like each month when we start this out we keep looking at the why the what and the how we really want to focus on this three-step process to make sure that we're providing consistent relevant communication which is a uh part of our strategic plan uh and really this month we're going to just kind of dive in and we're going to look at Chronic absenteeism and why it's important for school and then some of the changes to the student handbooks as it relates to absenteeism um this really hits two different of our strategic plan goals uh first uh
002strategic plan goal number three where we want to focus on developing deep relationships and engagement uh because if students don't have relationships if they don't have an adult at school at trust and if they don't have a class or um an opportunity for them to use their creative side or engage uh with their peers um then they're not going to want to come to school so we want to make sure that it is uh we're developing those uh deep relationships and then again making sure that as we understand our student handbooks and some of those pieces we want to provide consistent clear um communication so that everybody understands kind of the why of what we are doing um again we're going to focus on chronic absenteeism by definition chronic absenteeism is any time that a
003student misses more than 10% of Any Given school year so we have students that go to school for 167 days so when they miss more than 16 days of school they're considered chronically absent uh and last year we had one in four about one in one in 4.5 or almost one in five so somewhere between 20 and 25% of our students at Clearwater USD were chronically absent last year so we roughly had about 200 to 250 students um that missed more than 16 days of school last year and that is kind of a concern that we have we want to make sure that we can start uh focusing in on that so when we talk about missing more than 10% that's kind of what chronic absenteeism is we had over 20% of our students chronically
004absent from school last year and then what we found was interesting is that some of the statistics that about chronic absenteeism is students who are chronically absent in kindergarten in first grade are less likely to read on grade level in third grade each day that we have students in kindergarten and first grade they are using what's called foundational time where they're focusing in on learning how to read and the science of reading and when they miss 16 days uh over the course of a year you know that's a little over 3 weeks and you think about anytime that we're learning something and we miss over three weeks of learning it's going to be hard for us to stay on track and to be able to catch up with our peers and especially in those formative
005years of kindergarten and first grade they're grasping and their brains are learning so much that when they miss that amount of time it's hard for them to catch that up by the time they get to third grade and then when we start looking at students that are chronically absent in secondary school so when we're starting in e8th grade their chances of dropping out or not graduating increase almost two times their peers that are not chronically absent so we do see that there is a key contributing factor to students being in school and being successful again we know that Co had a really large wreck on some of our attendance and that our chronic absenteeism grown exponentially during that time but now that we're about five years removed from um covid we're still seeing chronic absenteeism
006or the likelihood of not coming to school is becoming an issue and so we want to start thinking about how we can uh work on some of these things so how are we going to help our attendance at USD 264 there are going to be attendance challenges uh that are either issued by the district we already had one that we issued for the start of this year um there are going to be attendance challenges that each building is going to be able to run whether it's a monthly challenge a semester challenge or even a year-long challenge uh we want to create more engaging Hands-On lessons one of the things we did last year as a central office is we went out to each building four times a year and just talked to kids we talked
007to kindergarteners we talked to seniors we talked to fifth graders we talked to eighth graders and what we did is we just asked them questions of what do you enjoy doing during the day what are things that you don't enjoy doing during the day uh what are some reasons why you come to school and what are some reasons why you wouldn't come to school and almost to a tea from kindergarteners to seniors in high school what they told us is when they get to create when they get to engage in owning their learning versus just sitting and getting from a teacher um that they're more likely to enjoy school and want to come so we're going to treate we are working and have building goals to make sure that we're creating those more engaging lessons
008uh we're also going to make sure that we surprise and Delight so we're going to have random acts of attendance meaning certain days uh the kids that are there or on certain days when we show that there are 90 kids at school that day that have 90% attendance or better there may be a random prize like a doughnut or Popsicle or um get them a drink from uh Casey's or something like that have a little bit of a surprise or Delight our fourth bullet point is we really want to build a culture where kids are running to school versus running away and that's something we learned from our back to school speaker this year Mr Buddy Barry is that are we creating a place where kids are excited to be or are we creating a
009place that they're dreading to be and so we really want to be able to focus on creating that culture and then lastly we want to be able to as a staff be one degree more and what we mean by that is we really focus on the difference between 21 degrees Fahrenheit and 212 degrees Fahrenheit at 21 water is hot and it's almost ready to boil but it doesn't have any power at 212 degrees water can power an engine and so when we start looking at that power that just being one degree more has we're thinking about can we reach out to that student can we ask what is it that they need in the classroom to be more effective and make them to want to come to school so those are some things on how
010we're going to help increase our intendance now some of the win factors when we're talking about some of the changes to our student handbook so when we talk about total days missed it's not full days it's the amount of periods that they've missed that equals one full day so in the elementary school at Elementary West there are four attendance periods during the day so when they have 12 periods that they've missed that equals three days uh if you're in seventh grade there are nine periods so when they have 27 total periods missed that equals three days and at the high school it would be a similar experience so when a student misses three total days or the amount of periods that equals that there will be a letter that's sent home just letting them know
011um that they've missed three days it's just kind of a heads up kind of opportunity when students Miss five total days there will be a phone call home from the building office uh to the parents to let them know that they've now missed five days in one semester and that we're getting to the point where we're close to being on track for being chronically absent we want to make sure that parents understand and maybe be able to ask them questions as to why maybe the students are missing that much uh or if it was one prolonged illness or something along those lines and then when we hit seven total days missed in a semester there will be a meeting that will be set up between the school administration the student and the parents to start
012figuring out and creating an intervention to help them be able to come to school and make sure that it's a culture where they want to come to school versus not coming and then lastly as board approved in June for every absence after s in a single semester there will be a doctor's notes required to make it an excused absence if they are just not feeling well and this is the eighth day that they've missed and there's not a doctor's note it'll go in as an unexcused absence so just wanting you to be aware of some of those changes finally I'm going the wrong way then finally when we start looking at this we want to end it with just saying again be one degree more so we're going to work really hard as a staff
013of going one extra inch one extra step one extra mile to help our students each and every day we're also asking the community and the parents be one degree more talk to them about the importance of school talk to them about the importance of showing up to work in each and every day uh we've had the opportunity over the last year and a half as we've developed our individual plans of study is to talk to a lot of employers and the number one skill that employers say they need in their Workforce right now is to just show up to work um that our chronic absentee problem is not uh just a school problem it's also a Workforce problem so how can we start building the skills for our students to be able to build those
014lifelong skills of just showing up to work again thank you here's my contact information uh phone number email address and my Twitter handle again I'm always open for anyone that would like to come in and visit um share some thoughts or just have a sit down so please reach out and let me know how we can assist you and thank you and have a great day