Sunday, April 28, 2024
Granbury ISD Superintendent Jeremy Glenn said during the Feb. 20 school board meeting that as of mid-February, the school district currently has a 5% breach in student attendance — which has cost the district $1.6 million in funding.
As a district, GISD has historically struggled with student attendance — and the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated the issue.
But now, with the implementation of a new attendance program, GISD is slowly headed back on track.
Instead of state funding based on enrollment, GISD receives state funding according to the average daily attendance (ADA) numbers — meaning that the district will not receive those funds for students on days they are absent.
“When we talk about that, that funding based on enrollment instead of ADA, that's huge, because for teachers just in August to February, that would be an additional 3% raise for all staff, so it's really big numbers that we're talking about,” Glenn said.
And with the end of COVID-19 in sight, increasing attendance numbers have now become the No. 1 priority for GISD.
“When we were told in August that attendance was a huge goal, we started calling other districts who are having better attendance than ours,” said GISD Assistant Superintendent Tammy Clark during the school board meeting. “A lot of school districts around us are sitting at like 97%, and we were at 93% last year.”
Through talking with other districts, the program RaaWee came up in discussion, which is a comprehensive collaboration platform that implements student attendance and participation improvement strategies.
"One of the things we weren't doing was monitoring (attendance) through this online system, so that we could (improve) our communication with parents, and be a little bit more proactive in that,” Clark said.
Since the program was installed in October, Clark said it has been easier than ever to communicate with parents about their child’s attendance. She noted that the program will send an alert when a child hits a specific number of absences.
"We started sending some warning letters home,” she explained. “If you hit three absences, five absences, eight absences, and then 10, those are the cut-offs for different communications for each student. Warning letter one goes out after three absences in a six-month period that are unexcused and so you can send (the letter) automatically through an email or text message to the parent.”
She said since RaaWee was implemented, the district administration has sent out 3,581 letters, made 367 logged phone calls, sent out 2,457 emails, and sent more than 1,600 text messages to parents. Additionally, 44 truancy court notices were sent out, which happens after 10 unexcused absences are logged over a six-month period.
"We can track this very, very closely,” Clark said. “It makes things a little more automatic for our administrators so if Susie missed yesterday and it was her fifth miss, it will automatically generate her name that we need to make a parent contact here for an intervention plan and make sure that we're communicating the importance of attendance, and that they're getting closer to truancy. The administrators think that it's a pretty user-friendly platform and makes it easier for them to know who to contact on the daily and make that a regular routine, so that's going to help us out.”
Pre-COVID, the attendance percentage for GISD in 2019 was 94.83%. In 2020, it dropped slightly to 94.62%, to 93.42% in 2021, and around 93% in 2022.
Now, for 2023, GISD’s attendance percentage is 94.7%.
“We’re getting back to that pre-COVID time, but that's not good for our students to be absent so much,” Clark said. “Our teachers can do a lot of good things with them, but they've got to be in their seats.”
Although the RaaWee program will help keep parents informed about their child’s attendance, several GISD campuses are using incentives to get children motivated to come to school on their own.
"They have competitions in the grade level and a couple of elementaries are going to do some March Madness on attendance, which is going to be pretty fun,” Clark said. “(They will also give) prizes for individuals who have perfect attendance at like the three- or six-week marks. Every campus is a little bit different, but they're really trying to incentivize regular attendance in small increments, so that we can get those kids excited about being there and get them in those classrooms learning; that's the goal.”
Glenn also gave a compliment to every individual involved in GISD as they have been “very intentional about attendance this year.”
He added, “(I want to give a) shout out to all of our principals who really tried to get creative in making sure kids come to school and our campuses because they're leading the charge on this.”
