School admins work to boost attendance
Report shows district in state’s 90th percentile
Administrators at Richmond Community Schools recently outlined plans to continue to boost attendance rates in the district before the board of education, discussing initiatives and student incentives.
During a regular board meeting on Nov. 13, the district’s board of education heard a report regarding district attendance. Executive Director of Curriculum and Educational Services Renee Stapels said his is the first time attendance data had been presented to the board.
“School attendance matters,” Stapels said. “It is arguably one of the most important indicators of student success. We can’t educate them if they are not here. We have an entire district improvement plan based around the idea of engaging our students.”
Stapels said when students miss instructional minutes they also miss opportunities for interventions, participation in extracurricular activities, athletics, and opportunities to create relationships with peers and adults.
“They miss out developing good attendance habits for college and their workforce, which is absolutely crucial,” Stapels said.
Stapels presented the board with several years of data on attendance, including viewing it from the lens of student support.
“Although some of these numbers may seem alarming, please know that our district proudly is still in the top 90th percentile of attendance in the entire state of Michigan,” Stapels said.
Stapels also said this school year, all of the district’s schools have reduced absences by 1,005. Stapels then showed an attendance chart for the 2022-2023 school year.
“Not too shocking, but 12th grade has the highest. What you might find alarming is that when we tend to think about elementary, we tend to think they are going to have amazing attendance, and actually kindergarten has one of the weakest attendance,” Stapels
said.
Stapels also discussed recently revised tardy labels, in which if a child is in that range, they may not be considered absent for an entire day, but just tardy in a larger scope. This is important from a student safety aspect of accounting for students, according to Stapels.
“At the state level they calculate everything from if they are here hours per day. So if you come in an hour late for example, they still collect your attendance as fully present. However our database collects it as if you are not, if you are either tardy or you have missed two hours, you have been absent for periods of the day. When we calculate once again from a student support lens, how can we give interventions, if it is a tardiness issue, if it is always and a student is always missing ELA, let’s find the root cause of this. Or if this student happens to be skipping toward the end of the day or avoiding certain classes, these are all things that we can help mitigate as we look at that data,” Stapels said.
Stapels showed a chart of district tardies by month, which indicated May and March as high tardy rate months.
“We actually have the most days of school in March. This year will be the first year where that is different, now that spring break falls in the last week of March, but typically as we collected this data, March was the most instructional
days for students,” Stapels said.
Data from the presentation also showed that in the 2022-2023 school year, the district had 28,675 total absences and 15,702 total tardies, equating to roughly 8.6 million instructional minutes lost. Stapels reviewed things that are happening at the district level to tackle the issue.
“We have put in place the district improvement student support team. … One of the teams among that team specifically addresses attendance. Like looking at attendance, how does attendance impact our student support plan; how does that impact our district improvement plan with all of our initiatives,” Stapels said.
Stapels also said each district building has student support team meetings weekly to review attendance data for consecutive and chronic absences. Teams of deans of students, counselors, social workers and others then come up with plans on how to help students address these issues, she said.
After Stapels’ portion of the presentation, the dean of students for each district school discussed the specific attendance concerns of their building. Will L. Lee Elementary Dean of Students Michael Gibson said last school year, the highest absence rates in the building occurred in November and March. The Thanksgiving holiday and extra spring break time in March can sometimes account for these absences, Gibson
said. He said parents are discouraged from taking their students out for extra time.
“But then you also look at it in a sickness lens. Like November and March, those are your highest months in terms of illnesses in the building. We are not telling kids to come to school sick. We don’t want that,” Gibson said.
Students are encouraged to stay home if they are ill so the building as a whole can be healthier, Gibson said. He also shared that this year in September and October, absences decreased at almost every grade level.
“Ultimately at the elementary level it is getting the information to our families and our students. … So just letting parents know that they are doing a great job so far this year,” Gibson said.
Gibson also said attendance is a concern nationwide. He said studies have shown that children who are chronically absent, which is about 15 or more absences, during their kindergarten and first grade years are less likely to read on grade level by third grade. He also said studies have shown up to 5% of kids have school-related anxiety, so developing positive relationships and offering additional support services are key to improving attendance. Gibson said it is important that students want to come to school, so engaging lessons and popular after-school activities are important.
“We have been tackling this issue the last several years in the district, and we have been encouraging good attendance to our families and students in a variety of different ways, offering many different incentives,” Gibson said.
Richmond Middle School Dean of Students Paul Knight also said November and March are high absence months at the middle school. He said many student incentives for attendance have been put in place.
“We know that we have some hurdles that we need to tackle but we are getting to where we need to go. Trend data from this year, this is with September, very similar to elementary, we have got improvements almost in every grade level. I think a lot of that is some of the programs that we are putting on, not just the programs that we are putting in place but you know, a lot less quarantines, a lot less things like that, that we have to worry about from a school standpoint too, so that is helping with that transition. October also looking very good for us, it is just one, it looks like, one grade that we need to focus on, but other than that, there has been improvements in all grades through the month of October which is outstanding,” Knight said.
As of Nov. 13, about 270 middle school students had perfect attendance in November. Knight said areas of focus for student attendance are engagement and relationship building, as well as creating programs that help kids want to be at school. He also outlined some of the initiatives and incentives going on in his building to increase student attendance, as well as measures such as at home wellness checks.
Richmond High School Dean of Students Becky Borwick said March and May are the highest months of absences at the high school.
“Probably attribute it to the end of the school year with high school students. One of our focuses though is obviously creating those engaging lessons throughout the entire year making sure that students know that there is obviously a purpose to what we are doing throughout the year, and making those connections,” Borwick said.
Borwick said this school year, absences have declined in September and October. She also said the focus has been on bringing some fun and normalcy back to the high school, as students missed some of this during the pandemic. She outlined some incentives and initiatives for attendance at the high school. She also mentioned things such as wellness checks, EHall passes and tardy warning bells are in place.
“The big focus at the high school is creating the environment that is positive, safe for our students and also an engaging learning environment. We want it to be a place where kids want to be,” Borwick said.
Also on Nov. 13, the Richmond Community Schools Board of Education heard the 2023 fiscal year audit from CPA Jennifer Watkins, a principal at Yeo and Yeo CPAs and Advisors. Audit results presented by Watkins included an unmodified opinion, or a clean opinion, indicating that the school’s financial records and statements are fairly and appropriately presented in accordance with accounting principles.
Additionally, Superintendent Brian Walmsley presented an overview of where the 2020 and 2022 bond funds were spent, and a total of remaining funds. Walmsley outlined some items that were added to the scope of the bond, which were not in the original bond scope, such as an additional athletic parking lot. He also made recommendations for the board to consider as items on which to spend remaining bond funds.