Northland board takes steps to improve school attendance

Annual $1.2 roadmap to focus on helping students rather than punishing them

A new attendance and engagement officer, consistent and detailed tracking of absenteeism and hiring family wellness workers are steps Northland School Division hopes will improve a long-standing attendance problem in its northern Alberta schools.

One day after Alberta’s auditor general flagged Northland’s lack of progress in tackling truancy in its 23 schools, its newly formed school board approved a comprehensive plan for change Friday in Edmonton.

Some of the improvements are already in place in schools and are making a difference, Northland school board chairwoman Maddy Daniels said Friday. She’s confident the plan will be successful.

“People are concerned about attendance. Of course they want their children to go to school,” she said.

A new system tracking why children miss school has shown families in the remote communities are sometimes gone for days to attend medical appointments or visit the dentist, Daniels said.

Travelling to see a doctor from her community of Paddle Prairie, 712 km north of Edmonton, leads to at least one day of missed school, she said.

COMPLEX SOCIAL ISSUES

Complex social issues and historic and systemic racism also contribute to absenteeism in the school division, leaders said. About 95 per cent of the vast northern division’s 2,500 students are First Nations, Métis and Inuit.

Attendance data from January show 42 per cent of students showed up for school less than 80 per cent of the time. Eleven per cent of students were absent for half or more of school days.

In March 2015, the auditor general said Northland “accepted poor student attendance as the status quo” and that decades of government studies and reports had prompted little progress.

The roadmap the school board approved Friday will cost about $1.2 million a year. It proposes establishing a division office of student attendance and hiring an officer to oversee it. The strategies will focus on offering help, rather than punishing kids who miss school.

Schools must submit monthly attendance reports, and senior leaders will regularly meet to discuss the numbers.

They’ll use the data to identify “chronic non-attenders,” and make an individualized plan for each of those students.

Hiring more outreach workers to help families, adding more career and technology options for students, and introducing mentorship opportunities for students are among the other approaches.

“I’m extremely hopeful. We’ve thought tremendously about this. Good minds have been on this,” Northland superintendent Gord Atkinson said Friday.

Northland was under the watch of a government-appointed trustee for seven years after the provincial government in 2010 dismissed the school board of the day. Last year, the legislature approved changes to the Northland School Division Act, and residents elected a new school board last October.

Northland will also receive a 20 per cent funding bump for the next five years to help pay for some of the systemic changes Atkinson hopes will lead to improvements.