With student attendance so essential to an effective education, an AASA national conference workshop on Thursday morning featuring panelists from Springfield, Mo., discussed the methods they used to boost attendance rates and improve funding in schools.
Community involvement, incentives to students and partnerships with local media were the keys for the Springfield schools to engage students in wanting to attend school regularly, according to the three presenters at a one-hour workshop titled “Attend Today, Succeed Forever: A Community Focus to Improve Student Attendance.”
Grenita Lathan, superintendent of Springfield Public Schools in Springfield, Mo., said her district had a goal, which she said was reached, to raise the attendance rate to 92 percent, which also would benefit the school district’s funding. To do this, she and her colleagues needed to shift the mindset of the entire community and publicly express the importance of regular school attendance.
Stephen Hall, communications officer in the Springfield Public Schools, said he decided the message needed to be spread everywhere. Yard signs stating “Attend daily. On time. All day.” were posted throughout the community. The school partnered with local media to create public service announcements. He said the cumulative impact of the public messages caused an increase in attendance.
However, the panelists said, these messages received some negative pushback from parents and students. After the COVID-19 pandemic, students did not have the motivation to go back to school and parents did not realize how important attendance was. To combat this, school leaders discussed how to prevent certain types of absences and reminded the students that accountability was the key to their success.
The panelists said their actions to reach this goal received mostly positive feedback from parents.
Ben Hackenwerth, chief strategy and innovation officer with Springfield Public Schools, worked with his team to come up with incentives to reward good attendance. Trophies and treats were given out to those who attended more frequently, causing an increase in high school attendance.
Adapting to virtual learning also improved student attendance. If students were suspended, they could continue to learn from home. Virtual learning benefited students who felt more comfortable in a home environment and led to more options for students to complete their work and still be marked present.
(Charli Slaughter, a sophomore at Mount Carmel Academy in New Orleans, is a reporter for Conference Daily Online.)
