Written by Neeley Keys, ESC Mental Health Specialist
School attendance is a crucial aspect of a student's academic journey. It provides them with the opportunity to learn, grow, and interact with their peers and teachers. However, it's not uncommon for students to miss class for various reasons, such as illness, family emergencies, or other personal reasons. While occasional absences may not significantly impact a student's academic performance, chronic absenteeism can significantly hinder their progress.
It's crucial to build a team of educators, parents, and community members to prevent student absences and ensure that students receive the support they need to succeed. Our attendance services will be able to walk you through building that team.
Absences Add Up
The Ohio Department of Education defines chronic absenteeism as missing 10% of instructional time for any reason – excused or unexcused. Data from 2017 to 2021 shows that statewide chronic absenteeism nearly doubled from about 16% before the pandemic to 30% in the 2021-2022 school year.
A student who misses 10% or about 2 days each month in Kindergarten has a much harder time learning to read. By ninth grade, attendance is a better predictor of graduation than eighth grade test scores. The data shows that students who are chronically absent are less likely to be proficient readers and more likely to drop out.
Missing a day of school here and there may not seem like much, but absences add up!
When a student misses 2 days a month...
- they will miss 20 days a year
- they will miss 30 hours of math over the school year
- they will miss 60 hours of reading and writing over the school year
- they will miss over 1 year of school by graduation
When a student misses 4 days a month...
- they will miss 40 days a year
- they will miss 60 hours of math over the school year
- they will miss 120 hours of reading and writing over the school year
- they will miss over 2 years of school by graduation
Building Your Attendance Team
Building an attendance team will assist in better outcomes for all students. Through an attendance team we can start to do some relationship mapping and get kids linked with trusted adults in a building. Every child deserves to have an adult cheerleader at school who wants them to be successful no matter what. An attendance team can also work to remove barriers for students and families and provide families with necessary resources to ensure students can be successful.
What are the Characteristics of an Effective School-Level Team?
The main objective of a school team is to develop and implement an attendance strategy that is an essential part of the school's plan to improve student outcomes. This can be achieved by integrating attendance team tasks into existing academic and behavioral collaborative teams. It is crucial to review attendance data every other week for every tier, not just for students with the most absences or truants. It is recommended that the team be representative of the school and district's diversity.
If the team does not reflect the diversity of the school community, the school or district leadership may consider the following questions:
- How can the school seek community input before creating policies?
- Are there recruiting strategies to help the school team better reflect the community?
- How can we incorporate teachers, parents, students or community members to participate on the team who reflect the demographics of the school community?
Functions of a school team focused on attendance:
- Organize a multi-tiered attendance strategy that begins with prevention and early intervention.
- Examine attendance and absenteeism data to assess which groups of students have higher or lower levels of absence.
- Identify assets, barriers and strategies that affect attendance.
- Mobilize everyone in the school community (teachers, parents and students) to address attendance.
- Determine if you are making a difference.
Considerations for Establishing or Aligning Attendance in School Teams
- What teams already exist in the school? Is there overlapping membership?
- How well are the existing teams functioning?
- Can the work of facilitating a school-wide attendance strategy be incorporated into the responsibilities of an existing team (for example, the building leadership team, MTSS team or PBIS team)?
- Can the attendance strategy functions be divided up with strong coordination across different teams?
- Does the school team reflect the school community demographics?
Suggestions for Each Member of Your Team
Nurses:
- Offer family guidance on taking sick days
- Leverage community health partners
- Help families recognize anxiety and how it impacts attendance
- Develop a plan to ensure a healthy school environment
Social Worker/Counselor:
- Identify basic needs as barriers and link to partners
- Classroom guidance activities, i.e. short stories, HB410 education, attendance videos
- Encourage home visits and welcome calls, particularly for vulnerable populations
- Message the importance of good attendance
Teachers:
- Show students you care when absent
- Connect with frequently absent students in a supportive manner - delegate when possible
- Build nurturing and engaging classroom
- Discuss attendance at PTC
- Embed daily check-in’s/check-out’s
Principals:
- Start family outreach early
- Communicate importance of good attendance
- Strengthen school climate and culture and family engagement efforts
- Build school-wide system of attendance incentives
- Leverage relationship mapping
- Monitor data
Secretary:
- Welcome all students and families with a smile
- Set up robo calls regularly and at key times, i.e. before school breaks, early dismissal, etc.
- Send out letter to families (in-home language)
- Ensure family contact is made when 2 days in a row are missed
How The ESC of Central Ohio Can Help
Our Attendance Services can...
- provide embedded coaching on all things attendance-related
- host professional development on WHY relationships matter when talking about attendance, how being trauma responsive can increase attendance rates, family engagement, how to conduct home visits, and more
- conduct a data deep-dive into attendance trends in the district
- develop an attendance liaison model to set schools up for success
- file truancy on students when they have met the threshold
Central Ohio Attendance Network (COAN)
The Central Ohio Attendance Network (COAN) is a collaborative space to share research, resources, and effective practices to improve student school attendance. The network is for central office administrators, building level administrators, truancy officers, social workers, attendance secretaries, and other staff with student attendance responsibilities. Partners of COAN include the Ohio Department of Education and Attendance Works.
To learn more about the Central Ohio Attendance Network, visit our webpage to get the details.
Building a team of educators around students is crucial to addressing chronic absenteeism. It requires a collaborative effort from teachers, counselors, administrators, and other school staff to identify and support students who are at risk of missing school. By providing a supportive and inclusive environment, students are more likely to feel engaged and connected to their school community, which can lead to improved attendance and academic success. It is essential that we continue to prioritize building strong relationships and partnerships with students and families to combat chronic absenteeism and ensure that every student has the opportunity to thrive in school and beyond.
Continued Reading
Neeley Keys serves as a Mental Health Consultant on the SOS Team at the ESC of Central Ohio. Neeley has 25 years in the Mental Health arena and has spent nearly 20 years managing school-based mental health programming. At the ESC, she oversees 17 Attendance Success Mentors, assists Community Schools with Attendance, consults with EPSEA Liaisons on high-risk cases, provides Social Work Clinical Supervision, and oversees the Prime for Life programming. Neeley’s expertise is in best practices for working with kids of trauma, relationship-building skills, Restorative Practices, and Self-Care. She has a passion for removing barriers so all kids have a chance to be successful. Neeley earned her BS in Criminal Justice from Indiana University and her MS in Social Work from Indiana University.