001Um Dr. Taylor is here to provide information on this and set up a discussion for the board on attendance and truency um issues by board request and this um he can speak to Christina's things as well I believe. Is she um still out for a bit? Okay, so she's excused before we get started too. Um board member Bade can't make the study session but He'll be at the open meeting and Charlotte is is on her way. Okay. She had to get started without her. It's all you. How's everyone doing? Good. That's all right. I I'll follow directions. What you'll find is a collection of information that deals with our student attendance and truency interventions that are taking place within the district. Our learning goals, we want to deepen our shared knowledge and understanding of Salt
002Lake City School District's attendance data and procedures. Am I moving too fast? Let me know if I go to talking too fast. We good? Yeah. Just you can even speed through this because I know the board has had a chance to read it. So but we understand that we have four major terms in terms of us addressing truency, chronic absenteeism, excused absences and unexcused absences. The difference is truency is when a child is absent and exceeds a certain amount but is not excused. Chronic absenteeism covers all absences whether excused or unexcused. Then you have the listing for some examples for what would be excused absences, illness, behavior, health concerns, uh family event, observance of a rel religious holiday, 14 that are recognized. Unexcused absences are when you out unexcused without a valid reason. In March
003of 2021 through June of 202022, there was a moratorum on schools taking any truency enforcement action. Before I got here, this took place and it was here for my first year. But when you look at our inter interactions with teachers as well as staff, you would have thought this has been in place for four or five years. This was really a short span of one year that we had this in place. On May 3rd, 2023, the language prevent truency enforcement was removed from the controlling Utah code provisions as HB304. Misconceptions about Winston and SRO agreements. There is no mention of truency or attendance in the 2016 settlement agreement in the matter of Kevin Winston on behalf of his minor son KW at all versus Salt Lake City Police Department at all. Our SRO agreements indicate
004that when the SRO becomes aware of truency issues, the SRO shall refer the conduct to the principal and any designated school administrator for appropriate action. The purpose of this provision was to make sure that any type of statutory mandated intervention had been implemented before any referrals or citations were issued. Preventive in nature versus punitive, I guess. Um, and that may be procedurally the protocol, but wouldn't the principal be evaluating their own school to see if there are such issues happening before an SRO's bringing it to their attention or Yes, ma'am. Is it what's happens more often the principal's identifying the problem and trying to resolve it or the SRO? The principal will be reviewing the school's data which we indicated on a regular basis, but the SRO might come in interaction with an individual child
005and become aware of it and that way bring it to the principal's attention. The principal should already know it, but this really just clarifies the process making sure that SRO's don't have any type of burden to act on it. I have a question for you about that, Dr. Taylor. The the misconception I hear is that faculty hear from their administrators that they are not allowed to refer truency that's happening on campus to an SRO. So if students at West are doing drugs in the bathroom in during the class period, that is considered truent, right? Or not habitually truent, but you're absent from class. You're not where you're supposed to be. It's the understanding of some administrators and some faculty that they are not allowed in such an instance to call the SRO. That's what you're
006saying. Yeah. You shouldn't have a SRO doing school-based discipline. They're there for the enforcement of laws or infraction of of the law in and of itself as a resource. The principal, the administration, the teacher should be addressing those matters respective within those buildings. And this question might be for actually our general counsel, who you said isn't here yet, that the question is about if they're only allowed to refer for violence and not allowed to refer for drug use or drug distribution. that's taking place in the bathroom during the school day. Does that make sense? I think that is the central confusion that faculty have is can an administrator refer to an SRO drug use and drug distribution that is taking place in the bathroom that is a cause of truency. She can I defer to
007her if she's complet Oh no. Just in time. She's got a question for you. you're up there. I'm not getting up there. I'm sorry to see the boot. Um what we what I was hoping to clarify um is that the misunderstanding of administrators and faculty of how to refer truent students who are abusing or distributing drugs during the school day in the bathroom. So in the Winston agreement, there's confusion about whether those things can be referred to SRO's or not. And if they cannot be referred to SRO's, what actions can a principal take if a student who is truent is using or distributing drugs during the school day. So being on school property in the bathroom, but not in class. Correct. Um but using or distributing drugs. So it's I mean it's completely two different
008um issues, right? So being truent is a status offense that um that we that SRO's are not going to take it initially. Um truency needs to go through the process that's outlined above referring it to an administrator. Um hopefully taking it to the SSC, the the internal committee um and um working on creating an individualized plan for that student. um implementing the interventions like at least three that are in that list, doing the notices of um truency for drugs, that's a different issue, right? Depending on whether or not they're vaping, whether or not it's illegal drugs, any type of unlawful drug use can be referred to SRO's. Um uh in terms of vaping, which is a lot of what's going on, uh uh anytime that you have a vape, those should be confiscated and put
009in like you should confiscate those. Administrators need to confiscate those. They can't be returned to the student or the parent. Um they need to be put in um the this proper disposal mechanism. Um and um vaping would tend to be h handled internally. We have a process for referring um to uh insight for is it insight or what's it called? It's insight. Insight um for sort of um those kinds of violations in terms of of cigarette ecigarettes um if it got bad. I mean there's a specific process that's outlined in S3 to deal with vaping. Um unlawful drugs though can definitely if you're selling drugs that can be immediately referred to the SRO. That's a violation of law. Yeah. So, um, so in terms of although being truent at some point, if you've been identified
010as truent, I mean, I think that's the issue, right? In terms of going through the process to actually identify that student as truent under the law and all the interim steps that we aren't doing that involving an SRO. that should be handled through the administration um and and looked at in terms of interventions and how can we get it to the point that we don't need to do a criminal referral but unlawful drugs can immediately be referred to an SRO. So, as a followup to that, when that's not happening and people don't believe it can happen, what are the steps that the district takes to meet our goal that I know is later in your presentation? And that's really not a question for you. That probably pivots back to you, right? What because everything that
011I just heard said is not what I know to be occurring from parents and students and teachers. So, I'm confused about how we get from where we are now to actually following the procedures that you've identified. That's going to be the education process of doing professional learning. That's why I included an example within the packet of previous professional learning that's taking place in terms of dealing with attendance and the referrals for attendance. But yeah, we're going to have to educate and continually continuously do job embedded professional development for our teachers and our for our administrators. Dr. Taylor, on that last one, could you also um that final bullet point that the purpose of the provision was to ensure statutory mandated interventions have happened first? Can you you're speaking to that a little bit more or
012Yeah. that Yeah. No, I just it was one that's such an important point that um I would love some attention from either of you on it. Okay. on what's required in terms of the Winston agreement and the follow-up SRO agreement that then um as some of you know who have been here for a long time. Um we were one of the first people because of the Winston case to have an SRO agreement and then that became um sort of embedded in code and um state code outlined you know what those agreements need to look like and it's been very clear throughout um our settlement agreements as well as state code and all our SRO agreements that um that SRO's have a certain um scope of authority and administrators have a different scope of authority and
013that the two really shouldn't meet that SRO's are not allowed to handle um administrative or disciplinary matters, right? And so that's sort of what um this provision was talking about that truency issues really are focused on attendance and that school um family connection and that those things first and foremost unless we get to a complete referral down the road that those things need to be handled by the administrator and that the SRO if the SRO is aware that a student is um loitering um we have some trespass options But they should be talking and working with administrators to say, "Hey, these kids aren't in class. I'm noticing these things, but the SRO should not be taking that action themselves." And then it goes to that list of mandate sta statutoily mandated interventions that the principal
014needs to start implementing and creating that individualized plan. I think as I remember it from that era, it was like an SR wouldn't walk into a classroom and confiscate a kid's cell phone. Um, but when there were exigent circumstances, I remember that word from back in the day. So when a law was broken or a crime was committed is when the SRO would step in and intervene. Is that still the case? So exigent circumstances are when there is an immediate risk to um someone's life or safety when um you think evidence is about to be destroyed or when you're sort of in hot pursuit of a crime. um obviously so so I mean it's hard to to keep this in the idea of truency and um attendance right but typically with truency there's not going
015to be ever an exigent circumstance right like truency and I think what and Ashley correct me if I'm wrong but I think what you're getting at is that sometimes these two things are taking place at the same time almost all the time yeah so the selling of truency used to be you leave the campus us and now people are truent on campus for a majority of the school day and we have faculty who you know parents can see on your device that your student was at the school building all day so they don't understand why they were marked absent we also don't have consistent procedures at all of our schools I know that sometimes students are absent the entire day and they're not marked absent you know in half their periods so so so they're
016sloughing their classes in at school right yes so I think they're intersecting in a way that they have not previously And this has caused confusion about how people are meant to deal with that because the reasons for truency are predominantly to stay at school, right? And I think we would have a truency issue. It's a hard to prove truency if they're checked as present, right? I mean, truency goes to the fact that they have been marked absent, right? it. So if their attendance shows that they are present and they're simply sloughing in the bathroom or not attending class, that's a different issue. Correct, Dr. Taylor? That's correct. Because the data is only good as well when let me say it a different way. When you look at the information that's being input, we have to
017depend on that for accuracy. So if someone's not checking attendance or not reporting their child as being absent from the class, we have no way of knowing it unless we physically catch the child somewhere. And also that affects our ability to do a five-day notice, a 10-day notice to create the plan or to implement those interventions because we aren't or the school administrators aren't seeing that absence those absences recorded. What kind of um inschool I guess audit could occur to ensure that teachers are um appropriately marking kids like a present or absent. I mean, and I haven't really run into this with my son because I I love the AI attendance, by the way. Um, as a parent, I get the Autobot. Your son's missing school. What's the reason? Well, I don't know. Let me
018find out. And it's really great. But I get these like, he probably could be considered one of these right now. Oh, he kind of is when I got the letter, but he's graduating in two weeks, so full disclosure. So ultimately, I guess that comes down to the people doing the the the input of that information the correct way if they're aware and kids can be creative. I get that. Um so figuring out a way to like make sure that it's properly recorded so that the issue could be properly addressed. We have to monitor input through power school and do periodic audits. So that's a process you'll hear us talk about toward the end of this the presentation. So, and there's some preventive things as well as monitoring things we're looking at implementing and training people
019on. And you mentioned Sherper, which is a pilot that we're running in 11 schools. That's not something that the district has fully embraced yet, but we're piloting it in terms of the AI response in order to see the effectiveness of it. Oh my gosh, I can't tell you how wonderful it is as a parent. It has been a game changer. Just saying. And that's the antidotes, Dr. Taylor. What you find next is just simple the legal framework. You you've reviewed it. You've seen this information before. So speed past these. When you look at policy S4, which is a student attendance and exemption from school overview and this the goal here is to address absenteeism early with supportive non-punitive measures. You'll hear that repeated over and over and over again. that each school had must develop
020a plan to monitor and track attendance develop develop appropriate interventions and incentives to address absenteeism. Notice interventions and incentives. So how do you engage kids in the process? How do you incentivize attending school? Principles received by quarterly attendance summary reports to identify chronically absent kids and they work with the SEC to design individualized intervention plans for students should have been SS sorry and that was my typo. Yeah to work with students who are chronically absent. I have a question about this. Um, some students are never marked as chronically absent because their parents excused their absences, like a very large number of absences, which as we know, we can check the other box and you don't have to explain that you've gone on a two week vacation or whatever. What are what are schools meant to
021do or SSC's meant to do when students are never referred as chronically absent because their parents have excused a a large number of absences? Let me add a point of clarity. They wouldn't be referred as truent but they would be referred as chronically absent. So even if the absence is excused they still fall under chronic absenteeism and we each school should have plans and interventions based on the fact that the child has missed instruction. How is the child being exposed to that instruction getting an getting an avenue to make up that work or to make up that miss time for instruction? This is the one when you look at state and district mandated interventions to address chronic absenteeism. If y'all want me to, I can go through them. But there are basically 10 interventions that
022are mandated that have to be followed. Now, can you enhance those and do additional things? Yes. But these are the minimal that you have to do. How do we support schools in doing those? Training. training and more training. Uh I guess that's the biggest way right now that we're looking at address. We'll know more as time progresses because we can't compartmentalize this. Attendance is interwoven through so many different things that it's not like we can just bring in somebody just to address attendance for for teachers of schools. That's a process that has to be interwoven in the school climate and the school culture that they understand that if you're missing school, you're missing something important. Well, and to go along with what Ashley's asking there, this was something that I ran into last year, and
023I've kind of alluded to it previously, but whenever a child is um struggling and not feeling engaged, and then you have the absenteeism, but then um the teams are um spread too thin with the more extreme um like at risk kids, whether they're failing out or whatever it Because like we have we have holes. So like you can train somebody 10 ways to Sunday but if they have only got the bandwidth for say eight kids but there are 10 kids that um need the support you know what are we doing to identify where our holes are so that we can like increase the engagement we can support the kids. We can support the adults in the building. And that was kind of when I sent that email this morning. I think it was um one
024of my questions to Lisa was kind of taking this back a notch and this is a component I feel that may be a contributing factor is flushing out the attendance and potentially chronic absenteeism of the teachers paris the administrators the adults in the building because I've had kids in classrooms where their teacher were absent like a significant amount of the school year which contributes to disengagement which contributes to attendance issues. So like you know this is really focusing on the kids and what we need to do but if we don't have the proper structures in place to facilitate the solutions then the solutions are just words. Does that make sense? But, you know, not to obliterate your presentation, but I think that, you know, when we're talking about this, we kind of need to backpedal
025and maybe it's future discussions and really go what's contributing to not being able to do these things that on paper they're great, but are they actually occurring? Gotcha. But also, I want to remind everybody with the board that we do what's called a comprehensive needs assessment on a n on an annual basis. So if these things are emerging as major issues or barriers within schools, they will indicate to us that they need additional resources in these areas, which is great. My experience last year was pretty rough. So I'm just saying sometimes proactive and solicit aren't being supported at the building level. I I guess I'm confused because when we looked at this attendance handbook and we made this a goal, there were district office staff designated to be working on this in the equity office.
026So that has that workload not shifted to new personnel. It has now come July one. Yeah. Okay. So that that's one of the things you're talking about. Sorry, I hear like a weird noise. Um because I would just agree that if we say we're doing these procedures but we don't actually have systems in place for schools to implement the procedures, we know that they're not able to at the scale. I mean we have some schools on the table we've been given that are like almost a quarter of students are chronically absent. And then the presentation also says we haven't referred truency since 2020. So I don't love the idea of referring truency in the sense that it's juvenile justice but juvenile justice also at least provides support when you don't go to school. and you
027graduate, you're then referred to criminal justice with no supports. And so it's very concerning that schools do not feel that they can make currency referrals. They don't know how to set up plans for people who are absent when the parents are excusing a very large number of absences and we don't have a clear organizational structure of how schools would be supported in doing this. And also my my last question would be who receives the training that you mentioned as the step like are we training specifically attendance secretaries? Are we training only principles and and assistant principles? Who who is the main uh receiver of the training in the materials that we've been given? Principles, counselors, office staff that's responsible for attendance have all received direct training then but we operate on train the trainer model.
028So, they're supposed to go back to their sites and replicate that training based on their needs. Well, I we've seen the data. I listed the board goal which was to reduce from 28% to 10% by 10 20 by 2029. As you see, this shows also our trend line that since 2018, we've gone up. We peaked at 11.5%. We've seen a decrease from that, but as you mentioned earlier, we're looking at what type of things can we put in place through the school's culture to engage kids in the process in a non-punitive manner. How do we make it more viable? How do we engage them through things like student clubs, through extracurriculars to make being in school valuable to them? This is chronic absenteeism. This is where you see that 28 29% in terms of the
029goal coming in. And we're looking at being out of school for any reason, excused, unexcused. We're above both the state and the national average. When you look at being referred to the court system for truency, we could not find evidence of anybody being referred. Sam, I'm going to pick on Sam for a second. We even went into power school and searched the term truency just to see out of the log entries what would pop up. We had one example of of a child popping up in terms of interventions being input into the system. I've been called in the last year one by one principal in a consultation step which the next step after that consultation if the plan hadn't worked would have been a referral to truency but the plan worked because the principal didn't
030call back so that child started attending school questions help on that kid right this discussion seems to be really focused on high school. There's also a real challenge in elementary schools and I think that those elementary schools need direction as well on how to address this. Um, if you go and look at that chronic absenteeism rate and if you look at the elementary schools, it's distressing. And to me, when you get in the habit of doing that in um elementary school, it's just going to continue on. So, one of the ways that we need to address this is our elementary schools and to have some sort of direction on how we approach that at that level. speaking as a teacher, it was incredibly frustrating because you would see these children that were chronically absent and
031there was I mean I'm being told well there's nothing we can do and we need to know there's something we can do. Do you know um whether it's Dr. Taylor or Sam because you pulled the data did we compare it at all with other districts who are referring truency Okay. The reason I asked that is because whether it's elementary school, middle school, high school, whatever it is, if we've reported one student, maybe I mean you said zero, but like almost one, other districts are reporting this. So it speaks to the overall issue of we have some type of system in place, but that system is not being utilized by our schools. And it's one tool that exists. And I think the reason this focus on secondary school is it is easier for families of young
032children on some level to make their kids attend school if they are choosing that. Right? It is not easy for parents of high schoolers to compel their children to attend school which is one of the reasons families ask about truency referral because truency referral places constraints and supports for a student who is refusing to attend that a parent individually may not be able to do. So is what what are the intervening steps between reporting zero and like what the average district is reporting in our state. we can look at that information, see what we can solicit in terms of that and then provide feedback from the title one survey that was did. We just simply pull. I agree with your statement, Ashley, but I guess what I'm getting at is the challenge that there's also
033exists in elementary schools is there are parents that just they're not that engaged in getting their children to school. And what do you do to encourage those um parents to get their children to school? It's really heartbreaking when you have a child show up and say to you, "I'm so sorry, Mr. Jensen, that I haven't been to school for the last week, but no one would bring me to school, or I didn't have a way to get to school, or we've got to we've got to remember that side of it as well." Uh and in addition it goes also to you've got those scenarios which are extremely heartbreaking and then you have scenarios where the kids don't want to go to the environment that they are being placed in for various reasons and so being
034able to mitigate those contributing factors so the child actually feels either safe at the school or engaged at the school. So yeah, there's a lot of layers, but I there with you. Elementary level, there's my kids dealt with several things through the years that I've had to kind of flush through to figure out how to um re-engage in the process. So it wasn't a big ordeal in the mornings. Right. Well, based on the title one survey that we did what, two months ago or roughly in that that realm, when you look at the elementary staff concerns as well as middle school staff concerns, you'll see that in inconsistent student attendance was the second issue. Well, I was number one on middle. Sorry. Now in terms of schools responsibilities, this is where we're having gap the
035gaps emerge between what's schools responsible for and what's being implemented. Schools are required to monitor and document attendance trends. That means forecast based on the information that they're given be able to say what direction are we moving? Are we moving up moving down? Create individualized plans for chronically absent students. Engage students and families proactively. implement tiered interventions. We commonly say tier one, tier two, and tier three. Issue formal notices and then work with support services. Some examples of the tiered interventions under tier one, contact family, student check-in, make sure that the plan design is being implemented. Tier two, at least they should have parent meeting, counseling referral, academic adjustments. That means academic plans put in place to help their child continuously engage in the academic process. Anytime they hit tier three, ensure at least three
036interventions have been tried before issuing any type of truency notice. If you issued a notice of truency, offer mediation and refer to outside services. I have a question. You stated that if parents were excusing a large number of absences, SSC would still engage in these interventions. Yeah. But this only indicates it's for unexcused absences. So, how do schools know they're actually meant to follow this for students who are routinely excused by their parents? But this I did for the presentation. When you look at the protocol, there's a protocol in the packet that reviews what steps the school should do for any child that's currently absent. Oops. Sorry. And I was referring back when you look at the tiered services for the school's responsibilities. What's the required documentation? Detailed attendance records, logs of all interventions and
037outcomes, copies of the notices sent, meeting summaries and parent communications, and that's where you get the summary report that comes to the district. These are the things that have to be done before the referral is made for Toronto City. You got a copy of the protocol that's in place. What we want to make sure is that schools are monitoring attendance and intervene early. They follow and document the tiered supports, issue the required notices, provide support and mediation, and prepare formal documentation for our referral. So there'll be times that in the future that if a school has not followed these steps, then we would have to refer back to the school and then provide those supports. There'll be times that we'll talk with them about what gaps have emerged through the process, but we want to
038make sure that at least we're meeting the minimums that's required statutoily. And we want to support student success and reduce court involvement. We want to review and dissimulate the protocol template the school as next steps. Train sitebased attendance teams again monitor fidelity of implementation. That's where the audits and reviews come into play. Provide ongoing professional learning, professional development, and work with supporting agencies. That's the key step to is providing rap what we call wraparound services. What do you mean when you say supporting agencies? whether it's a a peer mediation, peer court, or uh if there's an outside agency that we can work with that will provide attendance interventions as a resource. I can't pull out individuals right now. I'm just talking about general areas. There are some things too when problems within the family are
039causing attendance problems too. And right now like to we have the the Sherper pilot that's going on with attendance reporting at East High School. We're working with uh the United Way Promise uh Dream Builders part the promise partnership in order to have student navigators and student success coaches in place working with them working with a set case load of kids to encourage them to attend. We're doing small pilots throughout the district in order to see what programs work and can be scaled up. questions, Charlotte. Yeah. Um, for students who come midy year, like students that are newcomers and they come into the schools during the year, are they they um how do you handle that in terms of absences? You probably don't count the time they were not there, right? only the only time it
040starts the count starts when they're enrolled in school. So if anything if they come at the middle of the year the end of the year we don't count those previous days. There's no punitive measures for that and no accounting for that. Are you like prorating so to speak there? So if they're, you know, doing a full year, the chronic absentee rate is a certain number. But if they're coming in part of the year, that number should be adjusted to determine quantify it as a chronic absenteeism. So is that being done? Yes, ma'am. We prorrate according to percentages. Well, I just wanted to mention that there are there are a lot of um new newcomers to our country who come to our schools in the middle of the year and some some of these students haven't
041had any schooling or they've missed a lot of schooling while they were trying to get here. So, it's a very difficult problem and we have an a unique phenomena that's kind of existed for the last couple of months. We have a portion of our population that's vulnerable and because of some of the things that's in the news, we see attendance going up and attendance going down based on things that's being reported in the neighborhood or in the community. Can you help me understand one more time what it takes to qualify as truent as compared to chronically absent? Right. Chronically absent and I'm starting from the end. Chronically absent is any absence from the building, no matter excused or unexcused. If I'm I could be a baseball player, a football player, and a soccer player, and
042I'm absent because of school related activities that's still chronically absent. How are we exposing those kids to the instruction that they're missing? How are we making that work up for them? How are we getting them access to those primary services? That's good examples. Now, truency is unexcused absences. When you're out from school unexcused and you're missing, I want to say 20 days is the maximum. Not the maximum, the the minimum to be to be referred to the state. So, unexcused versus excused valid reasons. How do we respond to the fact that children can excuse themselves using our current system? They can still be chronically absent. They can if they're 18 years old and excusing themselves, they still can fall within chronic absentism. No, I mean like I could be nine and I could excuse myself
043as I know from personal experience. Um because you can fill out an electronic form online and if you know your parents email address and your student ID, you're excused. This isn't a secret that I'm sharing. This is okay with well-known information, you know. Gotcha. Hopefully, of course, like I could write a note for my parents in the 80s as well. Do you know what? Like I I understand this is not just linked to our procedures, but acknowledging that our procedures deacto allow children to excuse themselves. Is that contributing to why we're we have not referred truency since 2020? I can't prescribe the causation with a result of that. We can go back and we can look to see if we have those gaps like that that's contributing to it. But I would like to think
044through the reporting mechanism through parent school that parents would be analyzing information saying, "Hey, I didn't approve for you to be out 10 times. How you how you've been absent?" I guess as followup to that, you wouldn't know. Yeah. Excuse yourself. Like you don't get the notice from P school if you've excused your child or well actually on the system it shows absences and whether they're excused or not. So Oh, I see what you're saying. You don't get the alert. I don't get like a push notification. Yeah. That your child is absent. So, but so we're not we're not looking at we're looking at training people on procedures. We are not looking at revising our procedures to more accurately reflect what's going on at in our buildings if necessary. Yes. As gaps emerge, we want
045to make sure that that we're flexible and we're mobile with that. I'm curious based on that question that Ashley made. Very very good point. And if parents don't have the time or don't have good systems in place and you're looking at this AI system, um, uh, if it could also include your your a notification your child was mark excuse today, you know, and I would say with the AI versus the old way that I guess other people are still doing the old way, I was getting a phone call, a text, an email, like I I I was and I realize I probably could have put some filters on there, but it was comically obnoxious. But this is just one text, you know, let me know what's going on. Great. But can it be added that
046your child has been mark excuse today? Simple as that. Sam is nodding and yes, so I'm going to say yes. And I would say if um that technology especially sticks around, that could be a way to um make parents um immediately aware to initiate that conversation and tackle that type of issue. Right. I'm back at the question as to how come we haven't been referring truency because they hadn't gotten to that final step. I would just intervene to say I don't know that the train the trainers model is getting like it's like trickle down leadership. I it's not working because there are people doing these things in buildings every day and there are faculty who have been told directly we are not allowed to report currency. So part of requesting a study session which you
047can correct I see you nodding so I don't think that I'm wrong is that in our experience representing specifically west but as Brian's pointed out this is not a niche issue that people are told things that are very different in their school building than what we are hearing in this room. So other than just repeating what we're supposed to do, how do we actually provide effective oversight into making sure these things are being reported when applicable? And I would say that's by monitoring our data. But keep in mind that with our newer adjustment with working with the department, getting people on board, we would like to start with the training portion to be able to say, hey, what was communicated? How's it housed? And then how are we being held accountable? So at least being
048able to say we've trained everybody starting at that point then monitoring and holding people accountable. Well, I think that's critical because I think that there is a disconnect somewhere because I think that there are situations out there where individuals are being told and they really are trying to do whatever they're being instructed the process is and they get to where they think, "Okay, I've accomplished what I'm supposed to do." And then they're being told, "Well, no, you can't report it or whatever." So we need to have some sort of consistency across the district as to how we ensure that Christina do we have this as part of our employee training a subset on this policy or um it's they have I mean employees are to read the policies every year Right. And they attest to
049that. Correct. I mean, is is is there a separate vector training on school attendance? What I was going to say, how about we put that? Couldn't we do like a vector training? We can certainly create one and then upload it into our vector system. A burden on people is the one challenge. Well, there that's true. I mean, one more training that the teacher has to do, but that seems like is there one that we could take off? Um, no, but Logan's hiding. Um, Logan's already gets enough flack about h how many are in our, uh, vector training each year. They adding another one. But, I mean, we certainly could add another one. So, um, that we highlight all the main pieces and we can target the audience. So, it would go and it wouldn't necessarily
050have to be an every year. It could be every other year or we could we could we can work on that if if that's something that's a board mandate or the superintendent says that she wants that and I can say that I want that. I mean I think what we you're unearthing there's a disconnect in the information flow. We can address that. Right. It's a board goal to attend to attendance and absenteeism and truency and we can sharpen the information that gets out and how often it gets out and repeatedly gets out to people um on how to manage attendance. It also does come down to everybody playing their role. I mean if we look at it the national absenteeism rate is 28%. Which is just about I think at where we are in this.
051So everyone in the country is struggling with this right now. Truency is its own special problem. But chronic absenteeism I think is a function of our culture having shifted its values in a way that downgrades education and the daily expectation that students are in school. I think there's also real social emotional issues around this and parenting struggles to get their kids to school and things. We have on our every single web page in our system has at the bottom parent guidance which parents can go to and pull up training and webinars through the Cook Center to get ideas on how to get their kids to school. I mean there's there's lots of avenues that can be used to support this because it's all of us playing a role in getting this to happen. The teachers,
052the administrators, the district paying attention and providing the resources necessary. It just is such a big national problem that I don't want to underplay the cultural aspects of this and how our world has shifted this way. When I grew up and said I was sick, my mom said, "You have to eat breakfast first. Get dressed, eat breakfast, and then we'll decide whether you go to school." There isn't that sort of um attention to it now. The norms have shifted and so we're fighting that as well in our schooling. I mean, part of it's about engaging instruction too, right? And and trying to make sure kids want to show up so that they are self-motivated that way. I mean, there's so many pieces of this that I think we have to take it from all of
053those angles to make it happen better, but I appreciate that we're unearthing that there's a challenge in our system about the information people need. And I think we're still obviously um our kids are still recovering from the trauma of COVID like the isolation and everything that happened. I there's there's been so much trauma that's in inflicted on our kids and even the adults that is playing into this as well. I think that is part of the norms and culture too that have Yeah. And I will say that to highlight that um Utah was one of the few states that actually did a truency moratorum statute that went into effect and you know it did take I mean there was a big push you can't do this right and then all of a sudden it went
054away and there's still I mean I I think the shift to go back to you know truency is a big deal this is what we're doing especially understanding that kids are still suffering the effects of COVID and families that there hasn't then the natural swing all the way back to where we were before the moratorum went into effect. I want to kind of bring us back to the board goal. Um I actually have one more question. Could we describe what resources are available when students are referred as habitual truent by the county or other um providers? I can compile a list and we can forward it information. What are you thinking there Ashley? that that's valuable for that we share with teachers or we what are you thinking that just so you know no we
055haven't referred anyone since 2020 and I think there's some lost knowledge about what it means it doesn't mean you go to court and you suffer it when you go to truency court you receive specific supports that are related to compelling your attendance through again supports not punitive measures only and so I think people think of truency for the reasons you stated as punitive but it's my understanding there are resources available to students who are identified as Truman under the law. And because we're not doing that, I don't know that anybody here knows what all of those resources are. And it would be helpful to identify why it is beneficial in some instances to actually report students as truent where it's been seen as a like gentler approach to just not report them at all, which
056is not necessarily helping anyone. So a reframing of what that offers might help or induce people to follow through on pushing through toward truency. Just to know I don't know what's offered. I mean we haven't we haven't referred a student in five years. So, in the last five years, we don't know what students receive by way of plans when they are referred, but our peers in other districts do seem to know that and we're not necessarily benefit. Well, and thanks Ashley and where I wanted to kind of loop us back to as to our board goal and kind of some of the progress that we've made since we adopted that. Um, I know in the first year there was a specific set of standards that we needed to meet and I think hiring this person
057that you mentioned that starts in July that we'll get back to some of those interventions and then there's a three-year kind of goal and then a five-year goal um at least a set of goals and steps that we need to get ourselves to. I was looking for it in my emails, but I I couldn't find it unfortunately. But I'm just wondering what our progress might be towards that and how are we incorporating what we've identified and adopted into these steps if they need to be updated or re-evaluated or what have you. Can somebody share that with the new board members as well? We don't have do you I don't think the I'm sure I've got it somewhere in my materials but I'm not sure what you're referring to. Do you mean what's listed about attendance
058in the strategic plan or something else? Because I think it attendance is not actually really listed very directly in the strategic plan which is why we made it a goal plan as much. We need to add it into that. We were thinking of trying to embed it under one of the current pillars in our revised version but that um it is one of the board goals. Yeah. And I think you're referring to the board goals document that has the three-year and the fiveyear steps. Yep, that's what I'm referring to. Sorry, I got that mixed up. And what are you thinking with that, Nate? Sorry. Just like what's our progress to it? You know, we adopted it and um where are we where are we going with it? Revisiting it would be good, right? I think
059so too. We just adopted it in December. Um, and looking at those again, we're also creating a dashboard of those measures so the board can access that and see where we are at any time that we can put together so that has that public information accessible. Any of the things that we've got just a couple minutes here. No, sorry. I'll call time. Well, I have this question looking at the chart so others may have it. Um, can you explain the difference between the absentee rate and the chronic absenteeism rate? Because just my mind says why would chronic absenteeism rate be higher than absentee rate? Okay. And it might be I'm just not understanding what the calculations are. So if you could maybe cover that going going back to the same thing again in terms I
060appreciate that question when you look at chronic absenteeism that's excused and unexcused together your absenteem rate is just your unexcused absences. So it's the kids who have missed and the parents have not excused it. No information has been sent to the school. No valid reason. Chronic absenteeism. We've gone on family vacation. we are visiting somebody during the holidays and we want to stay an extra week or school related activities you know e excused the simple way is excused and unexcused versus just unexcused the absentee rate could be the precursor to the truency issue correct yeah and largely I think that follows some of the conversation of absence are absences are getting excused on an incredible rate um just to see the difference between those two graphs And and I will say the legislature keeps adding
061reasons for a valid excuse. Like this year they added the participation in a rodeo. That's right. So each year they do add more reasons why a student can have a valid excuse. So in this state it would be likely that excused absences are going to go up because because that seems to be where the culture is going. So Christina, can I ask you along that line? Has the legislature said that it's um okay to you've traveled outside of the country to see your family and so you're going to be gone for a month? I I was going to ask the same question to add to that. That's why I think there's so much appetite that you're hearing for more than training about the procedures because no amount of telling someone what to do is helping
062schools actually respond. Like Brian's example is not a fiction. It is a real specific example and you can't just go through a checklist and address that example. Like it doesn't it doesn't work and it especially doesn't work when it's happening at all tiers of schooling. I mean there's not many here that are substantially diff you know there's very few outlier. I mean horizonte has the best attendance in district. you know, we have like a couple of small outliers here in terms of chronic absenteeism, but everyone else is really going through it and that's I think it speaks to that. And I'll just report a little bit um from the JLC meeting this last Friday. Part of the discussion was asking the legislature to provide additional tools to eleas to help address absenteeism. Everybody's going through
063it. Um I think we've identified some things that can help our teams and schools and teachers and I know they're frustrated because they're expected to help improve students growth over the course of a year and yet students aren't in class. So there is a recognition of what they face that way when so many students are missing huge chunks and to have particularly a large class and try and catch up individuals is always a balancing act. Thank you for trying to get that going. Yeah, it's a really hard Yeah. To try and retach a lesson that your days past is one of the more frustrating things as a teacher to face. So these are big and important questions. I want it to be in the context of what the world is facing and what um but
064what we're trying to do this way. I think we're on track to do some things particularly with these pilot programs that can make a difference but they are going to take intensive resources to do it. I mean it it ends up being one-on-one relationships that al that often bring kids back to school. Um so the reason it's resourceheavy to to do some of this Sorry. One of the things that from NSBA that I'll touch on is one of is a piece that plays into what you just said actually that I was planning on covering because it was one of the Oh, good. um sessions I attended which was very poignant about attendance um more the relationships and those connections with every single student in the building. Yeah. So, it's becoming more and more critical. Thank
065you, Dr. Taylor. We have three minutes left. Can I say one more thing? I just wanted to point out this underscores Bryce's past requests for us to review family and school collaboration costs that we know one of the number one things we could do that addresses this specifically in some of the schools with high rates is to resume family school collaboration practices that uh one of the number one things we can do. Yeah. I mean what we talk about the second list here says engage families and students. We had personnel who were doing exactly that. Adding personnel together and also helping in ways that are culturally responsive, which is what you're speaking to is some of the challenge here. And we we stopped doing that at those schools. And we not only stopped doing it,
066we didn't expand it. And by not expanding that particular resource, it seems like we're not putting resources to where some of these priorities are that we're training people on. So, I just wanted to speak to his ongoing request that we look at that. Yeah. extra adults to be able to tackle that. Oh, and can that be an upcoming um study session? Really dissecting um how that benefited in the past, what's changed since, you know, really going through those questions to analyze that as um I think it's more a resource question. What would the resource? I mean, it could be a I'm I'm just trying to frame it as it's not a question of whether or not an extra person there helping with family school connections could be of value. The original program before I got
067here was deemed not to be working well enough to continue. So, there was that decision made. But then we can look at this. This would be one of the things as we've talked about raising taxes possibly to fund some initiatives. This one would be at the top of the list of requests. This and some supports around school discipline and student behavior, those sorts of things come to the top of the list. So, um I mean that would be I'm trying to frame it. I'm not sure that a study session about something that we all agree unless you want to just dive into it. And like kind of what you're saying there is something that I've been chewing on is maybe another study session could be um is what are our top um holes that staffing
068would could help with and then looking at our financial budget and figuring what we can do to shore up those holes because I've heard stuff about um coaches and then you know we've got this position the uh never- ending conversation about Paris and the part-time versus full-time. So, we can stop having that turnover issue, which is a indirect cost, but it's still a real cost. Um, and on that if we can really like sit down and turn through what are our main chronic problems that we can um fix through some staffing needs with the current budget. Then also um in relation to the upcoming tax increase discussions then that might be a way to kind of um flush out where we can expand help in our buildings. Yeah, that's why I was want I found
069the document and the board goals document. I mean, one of the one-year strategies um is to initiate family engagement strategies, including home visits and family education workshops, reaching 50% of families in high-risisk categories. And so that takes people, you know, and and the resources and um to help us get there, you know, and so I think that's for attendance goals. Yeah, it's for our attendance goal. And so that's why I was hoping that we could kind of revisit this particular document and in the goal that we adopted. Um because I think there's some really really good things there. Maybe even some some cross collaboration in what what Bryce has requested in the past too. I think on that note we've run out of time. Yes, we're adjourned.