Community & Parent Engagement to Improve High School Attendance

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Permalink Reply by Michelle on July 26, 2009 at 9:21am

Sorry. I am of no help as my kids have not reached the high school level yet. Maybe you could check your state PTA website to find websites for other highschools in your state and browse them for ideas of what those high schools do.

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Permalink Reply by Michelle on July 26, 2009 at 9:29am

check out the "How to increase PTA participation in high school" discussion in this same forum. PTA Administrator posted a link to a high school website that has a ton of ideas on it's community service page about community organiztions and service clubs. this may be just what you are looking for.

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Permalink Reply by Ahnna Estes on July 27, 2009 at 8:59am

Thank you, I did look at this disccusion. I was particually interested in seeing if anyone had done anything related to Attendance. Maybe I'll get lucky and someone will post something.

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Permalink Reply by Michelle on July 27, 2009 at 11:49am

oh sorry. I think I read your post wrong. LOL For some reason the word attendence is the topic title didn't even register with me..

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Permalink Reply by Ahnna Estes on July 28, 2009 at 2:49pm

Not a problem, I just hope someone out there sees it and has some ideas.

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Permalink Reply by Roger Devine on August 4, 2009 at 11:23am

Hi Ahnna,

Can you tell us a little bit more about the current situation? Is the problem competition with other schools, or is is low HS attendance in general in the neighborhood?

Parents for Public Schools is a great organization that may also be useful to you: http://www.parents4publicschools.org/

Roger

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Permalink Reply by Ahnna Estes on August 10, 2009 at 12:47pm

Our attendance has gone from 93% in 2004 down to 90% in 2008. It has been a fairly steady decline that is contributing to a decrease in our graduation rates from 87 in 2005 down to 74 in 2008. We are looking for for some ways to improve the apathetic attitude about attendance that appears in our community. I would appreciate any suggestions. I will also check out the sight you gave me.

Ahnna

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Permalink Reply by Jackie Pettis on August 10, 2009 at 9:51am

Our high school has an awesome attendance policy. You can check it out at at timpanogos@alpinedistrict.k12.ut.us and look on the left hand side for the attendance policy. Since they adopted this policy 3 years ago, our attendance has improved significantly. In fact, with my first daughter in high school, I was shocked at parent teacher conference when I found out that they did not have an attendance policy in place. Two years later the policy was in place and things ran much smoother and students were accountable. Parents, PTA members, faculty and administration make up the board that wrote the policy so everyone had an input. Prior to this policyt, the teacher's didn't even seem to care that a student missed their class.

Our school also has a caller that phones the student's home each day that they miss and is a recording that lets the parent know exactly what class(es) were missed that day. It is working and things run really smooth. Students think twice about skipping out on classes now. The policy also covers tardies and if they have more than 4 tardies in a term, they have to attend attendance restoration class (ARC).

Hope this gives you some ideas. It works fabulous!

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Permalink Reply by Ahnna Estes on August 10, 2009 at 12:43pm

Thank you Jackie, it looks like a great policy. I will discuss with our principal.
Ahnn

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Permalink Reply by Carol on March 2, 2010 at 2:26pm

See my comment to Jackie and go to site: schoolpoliciesthathurt I have researched it thoroughly and if you want, I could forward some emails about improving school attendance to you. Just post a comment on the site.

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Permalink Reply by Carol on March 2, 2010 at 2:24pm

I realize that such enforcement is effective in improving attendance but it does not address the underlying problems and wreaks havoc in many situations where it ruins a student's transcript just because they did not have enough seat time. If they would put the effort that they are using for monitoring all of that policy and the ARC's instead into communicating with the at-risk kids, I think the overall benefit would be far greater. After having to deal with the effects of such a policy, I think it is overall very detrimental for more students than it is good. You can see our efforts to change our policy at schoolpoliciesthathurt site.

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