HOULTON, Maine — RSU 29 has joined a nationwide effort to celebrate Attendance Awareness Month in September and has pledged to raise awareness about the value of regular school attendance and focus on reducing chronic absenteeism in the new school year.
The school district recognizes that good attendance is essential to academic success. But far too many students are at risk academically because they are chronically absent. Chronic absence is described as missing 10 percent of the school year — or about 17 days — for any reason, excused or unexcused.
That’s the point at which absenteeism begins to affect student performance, research shows. Starting as early as kindergarten or even preschool, chronic absence predicts lower third grade reading scores. By middle school it’s a warning sign that students will fail key classes and drop out of high school.
School officials said nationally, 5-7.5 million students miss nearly a month of school in excused and unexcused absences every year. The schools within the local district report that in the 2015-2016 school year, approximately 12 percent of the student population missed nearly a month of school in excused and unexcused absences.
“This matters to all of us, not just those with school-age children,” Town Manager Butch Asselin said. “When our schools graduate more students, on time, our communities and our economy are stronger. We have more people who are prepared for the workplace and more engaged in our community’s civic life.”
Superintendent Ellen Schneider said, “We know that we will not effectively narrow the achievement gap or reduce our dropout rate until we bring this problem under control, and that means starting now.
Board Chairperson Fred Grant said, “All our efforts to improve curriculum and instruction won’t matter much if kids aren’t in school.”
While this focus on decreasing chronic absenteeism will be an ongoing emphasis for the district, September will be the kick off, as it is the beginning of the school year and is also Attendance Awareness Month.
“September is a particularly good time to focus on attendance,” said Hedy Chang, director of Attendance Works, a national nonprofit dedicated to improve school attendance “Research shows that students who miss two to four days in the first month of school are more likely to become chronically absent during the school year. By paying attention to absences early in the school year and early in a child’s academic career, we can turn around attendance and achievement.”
Study after study shows that chronic absence is an early warning indicator that a student will drop out of a high school. A recent study from Utah found that a student who was chronically absent in any year between eighth and 12th grade was 7.4 times more likely to drop out than students with better attendance.
