Administrators promote attendance
Leaders hit the pavement to advance hybrid learning
Dressed in sneakers, a blazer and an Allentown School District T-shirt, Tiffany Polek, the district’s director of student services, circled up with her similarly dressed colleagues in the administrative building on South Penn Street to give a couple of reminders.
“Awareness, support,” she said, emphasizing the tone of their message
to families before they head out to knock on doors.
“Meantime, my email looks like a progressive slot machine,” joked Brian Siket, executive director of special education. “Don’t look at it!” Polek said. Polek’s department is used to conducting home visits. In the 2020 calendar year, it did close to 3,500, according to district attendance data. But as the district prepares to pivot to hybrid learning in the fourth quarter, after more than a year of remote learning, Polek’s team decided to enlist the top brass — school administrators, as well as staff and local community organizations — to hit the pavement and promote good attendance.
The concentrated effort to make sure families are prepared for hybrid learning involves nearly 200 school staff and volunteers, including the superintendent and his cabinet, visiting 4,600 students across 3,000 homes in eight days, Polek said.
These are students with absentee issues, but administrators weren’t heading out to act as truancy officers.
“We want to give positive support,” Polek said. “We thought it was important for them to see us.”
Some administrators and staff started in their respective neighborhoods Wednesday; central office administrators kicked off their efforts around lunchtime Thursday. Superintendent Thomas Parker; Polek; Polek’s assistant, Brenda Perez; and Deputy Superintendents Lucretia Brown and Jen Ramos teamed up to knock on doors on South Penn and South Fifth streets.
This is a Mosser Elementary School neighborhood, so Polek, the former principal, knew some faces.
“It’s Tiffany,” she told a woman when, midway through their conversation, she recognized her through their masks. The conversation, a quick one, turned into excited, familiar banter. Then she handed her a door hanger that says “School attendance matters.”
Administrators took turns, but the formula was simple: ask if the students are home, what school they go to, and whether they’re choosing hybrid in the fourth quarter, then encourage them to keep logging on.
Schools throughout the district saw greater absenteeism during the fall 2020 semester compared with fall 2019, according to information The Morning Call received through a public records request. Absentee rates in 2019 — the percentage of students marked absent across all the days of the semester — ranged 5-9% at the elementary level, 6-9% at middle schools and 12-13% at high schools. In fall 2020, they ranged 5-15% in elementary, 8-14% in middle and 18-25% in high school.
A significant contributor to this is an increase in the number of students who are chronically absent, meaning they missed at least 10% of the school year, or 18 days. In December 2019, 1,075 students fit this description; in December 2020, 3,279 did, according to data released publicly at school board meetings.
Polek said motivation is a big factor in the attendance drop. Recently, she said, teachers have been embedding social-emotional learning into their lesson plans.
Parker, trading his suit jacket for a pullover, said the pandemic shifted a lot of family dynamics. Many children with working parents now have dual responsibilities: taking care of their siblings while being responsible for their own school attendance.
“When you’re at school, and all you do is school, it’s a bit easier,” he said.
And some families struggled to keep an income during the pandemic — a reality the group encountered on Thursday’s walk.
“Is that an eviction notice?” Parker said, looking at a door on the 100 block of South Penn. “COVID has significant impact across the city, in more than just school.”
But he’s talked to parents who are excited to ease back into school with two days of in-person instruction. This begins April 19 for elementary students and April 26 for secondary.
On the 100 block of South Fifth Street, Cynthia Ware popped out of her home to bring in her recycling cans. She wasn’t on the administrators’ list, but Parker stopped her anyway.
“I want to meet you,” he said. Ware’s goddaughter, a firstgrader at Mosser, was inside virtually schooling.
“We’re just trying to make sure our babies are staying plugged in,” Parker starts.
“Oh yeah, 100%, but it’s a fight,” Ware said.
Just then, from inside the house, her goddaughter said Ware’s phone was ringing.
“Don’t worry about the phone — school!” Ware called back.
Ware said she has to take all possible distractions off the kitchen table to try to keep the first-grader focused — “nothing but this computer,” she said.
“That’s my daughter, too,” Parker laughed.
She’s not sure yet whether her goddaughter will choose hybrid in the fourth quarter. A lot of parents are still wary of the virus, she said.
“Then again, it’s a true challenge, them being at home,” she said. “Do I have gray hair yet?”