For the next two months, Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District will make an extra push to make sure students show up for class.
The district will launch its “Show up for Excellence” campaign, starting Monday, to encourage attendance. Superintendent Eddie Peasant announced the campaign this week in a letter to district parents.
Peasant, in an interview in The Dispatch, said the district emphasizes attendance year-round, but the more conspicuous effort in the fall is well-timed.
“We feel like it’s a good time to increase the awareness of this important aspect of school,” Peasant said. “Also, these are the months that our official average daily attendance is taken for the state and measured, which leads to our funding.”
Attendance plays a role in how much state funding the district receives. An increase in average percentage from 95 percent last year to 96 percent could net SOCSD an additional $200,000 in state funding.
Peasant said the district’s schools generally fall into the 94- to 96-percent attendance range.
SOCSD is encouraging parents to be aware of the “63 percent rule,” which means students have to be at school for at least 63 percent of the day to be counted present.
For example, that means students at West, Sudduth and Henderson Ward Stewart elementary schools can arrive no later than 10:20 a.m. to be counted present. If they arrived at the start of the day, at 7:40 a.m., must remain until 12:15 p.m. to be counted present.
Parents can also check their students out for up to about 2 1/2 hours in the middle of the day and the child to still be counted as present.
The initiative
The district will engage with parents through material such as Peasant’s letter and social media reminders to make sure students attend school. Schools will also offer short-term and long-term incentives — such as the school with the highest attendance getting a pep rally — for students.
Peasant said SOCSD faces some of the same challenges as most other districts. For example, he said attendance generally starts strong at the beginning of the year, and tapers through the fall. It usually rebounds after winter break, and decreases again during the course of the spring semester.
He further noted attendance can dip before or after holidays and said SOCSD will take special care to encourage parents to make sure their students are counted present on Wednesday, which is the day before the district’s fall break starts.
There’s another challenge SOCSD faces that many other districts do not since Starkville is also home to Mississippi State University.
“When you’re in a college town, away college football games can impact your attendance on Fridays sometimes,” he said.
Attendance importance
While students need to be at school for at least 63 percent of the day to technically be counted as present, the district is emphasizing it’s important for students to be at school all day, every day.
“They miss out on so many things if they’re late or checked out early,” said Armstrong Middle School Principal Julie Kennedy. “Teachers have prepared fun and engaging lessons that we think are vital to their education experience.”
Kristi Swift, a teacher at Sudduth Elementary School, said attendance is crucial at lower levels, where learning is more of an experience. For example, she said most of her teaching involves some sort of game or manipulative, and that can’t be recreated on paper make-up work.
“I can remediate children who aren’t in school, but when they’re not here, they’ve missed our experience together,” she said. “That’s learning from their peers, their teacher — seeing things in a setting that a sheet of paper can’t provide.”
Swift also said even small amounts of time can add up over the course of the school year. Her class has a block of time for reading every day, and she said missing just five minutes of reading every day can add up to 15 hours for the year.
Beyond the academic implications, Swift said attendance is particularly important for young students as they develop socially.
“It’s a social experience all day long,” she said. “They’re learning to work with others and share ideas. They’re listening to others and cooperating with people.
“They’re learning valuable lessons on how to be a member of a larger society outside of our classroom,” she added. “This is where it all starts.”
The district will adjust the focus of the attendance campaign, from parents at lower levels, to being more student-focused in higher grade levels.
Peasant said high schools tend to lag behind others in attendance, as it relies more on students driving themselves to school. Part of the challenge, he said, is on the school district providing an engaging learning environment and activities the students want to participate in.
“High school can be and usually in a lot of cases is the level that’s on the lower end of the schools as far as attendance,” Peasant said. “That’s because more responsibility is placed on the students. They’re driving, and they have other things that are going on that challenge them and their parents more as far as them coming to school every day.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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