Prevention: The Best Solution

Prevention Efforts

One of the most important aspects of a model SARB is its potential to promote early intervention to build a culture of attendance throughout a school. Prevention efforts increase average daily attendance (ADA) and the percentage of students attending school at least 95 percent of the time, reducing costs associated with referrals to SARB.

SARB strategies based on the cost of these services and the number of pupils served.

• Prevention costs the least and reaches the largest number of students.
• Early identification costs more than prevention and serves fewer students.
• Intervention costs the most and serves the smallest number of students.

A good SARB process is directed at developing effective strategies responsive to all three areas. The following chapters detail this continuum in the SARB process.

All efforts to improve student engagement should be rooted in prevention. Prevention activities cultivate school connectedness, promote a positive school climate, enhance school safety; and set high expectations for accountability, all of which are essential to positive academic outcomes.

All school absences have a negative impact on learning, the effects of which can be particularly hard to overcome for students with pre-existing barriers to learning. Students with disabilities, English Learners, students from low income families, students in foster care, homeless students, and students who have experienced trauma are all likely to have incurred gaps in their learning. Absences from school, excused and unexcused, only add to these losses.

Among middle and high school students, poor attendance is one of the key early warning signs that a student is becoming disengaged from school and is at high risk of dropping out.

Chronic Absences Can Remain Hidden

Many schools and school districts in California do not know if they have a problem with chronic absenteeism. Schools typically focus on ADA figures and track truancy when children miss school due to unexcused absences. Both responses to absenteeism allow chronic absence to remain hidden. The following true story illustrates this point.

With an enrollment of 2,119 students, Example High School (EHS) had an ADA rate of 95 percent and the staff there felt pretty good about that.

In all, EHS students missed a total of 20,598 days of school in 2011–12.

After hearing a presentation on chronic absenteeism, one of EHS’s assistant principals persuaded their information technology department to help them identify all the students in the last year that had a pattern of chronic absence. It was not easy. The student information system did not have the built-in capability for identifying chronically absent students or for calculating the school’s rate of chronic absence. The fact that students move in and out of school throughout the year was also a complication.

In the end, the assistant principal discovered 341 of EHS’s students had a pattern of chronic absence. As a group the chronic absentees were responsible for 11,162 of the school’s absences. Just 16 percent of the students caused more than 54 percent of the school’s absences.

Even more alarming, the members of this group averaged 32 absences a year, most of which were coded as excused.

Board Policy and Administrative

Procedures for responding to truancy miss many students who have excessive excused absences. The only way to address chronic absenteeism is through policies and procedures designed specifically to identify students with this pattern of attendance.

Prevention starts with the adoption of an effective school district Board of Education policy and administrative regulation on attendance. These must include procedures for early identification of attendance problems and constructive intervention, well before the first formal SARB meeting with a student and their family is considered. The policy must reflect the philosophy that regular school attendance is critical. The policy and accompanying administrative regulations should also include a formal means of recognizing good attendance and holding schools accountable for attendance rates.

A model board policy and administrative regulations should:

• Establish county or district SARB’s and acknowledge their role in preventing and addressing attendance and/or behavior problems, as well as coordinating community efforts.
  
  
• Allocate resources to attendance, including establishing child welfare and attendance supervisors, community outreach, and a SARB.
  
  
• Ensure the monitoring and review of attendance data, ideally using the Extended SARB Report form (XLS).
  
  
• Establish overall district and school goals for improving attendance and reducing chronic absence and truancy.
  
  
• Encourage development of a comprehensive and tiered approach to promote attendance by combining universal strategies that build a culture of attendance with early identification and targeted interventions.
  
  
• Encourage the collection of attendance data and analysis (including levels of chronic absence, truancy, and chronic truancy) across schools, grades, and student sub-populations.
  
  
• Set a time limit for clearing absences.
  
  
• Set limits on the number of absences allowed before medical verification is required.
  
  
• Define the process for verifying absence due to illness; quarantine; medical, dental, optometric, or chiropractic services; attending funeral services; jury duty; illness or medical appointment of a student’s child; justifiable personal reason; or serving as a member of a precinct board.
  
  
• Specify a uniform time limit and format for all schools in the district for notifying parents of absences.
  
  
• Support the early identification of students at risk due to chronic absence (missing 10 percent or more of school for any reason over the course of an academic year).
  
  
• Recognize students who have excellent and improved attendance.
  
  
• Require schools with unusually high levels of chronic absence to develop plans to improve attendance and reduce chronic absence.
  
  
• Provide a process for receiving feedback on the impact of the SARB process on attendance, such as a school board member receiving periodic reports from the SARB.
  
  
• Consider alternatives for recovering lost attendance, such as establishing a mandatory weekend program for habitual truants pursuant to EC Section 48262 .

Other Prevention Elements

Other elements of prevention include school-based activities that encourage a high rate of attendance, such as National Attendance Awareness Month, teachers’ and administrators’ high expectations for attendance, recognition of students and classrooms that demonstrate high rates, and an analysis of classrooms, student subpopulations, and schools with low attendance rates. A list of prevention strategies also would include prompt notification of absences in the parent’s home language, special field trips, prizes for perfect or improved attendance, and counseling for truants.

The SARB process also acknowledges the role of a positive school culture that is safe, secure, supportive, and peaceful. Good attendance rates are closely correlated to a positive school climate and a student’s connection to school. Factors such as bullying, harassment, intimidation, victimization, or discrimination negatively impact school attendance.

Each school is required to annually evaluate its comprehensive school safety plan (EC Section 32282 ). This plan must include a school site council or school safety planning committee that addresses the prevention of bullying, cyberbullying, sexual harassment, drug and alcohol use, gang involvement, and other negative behaviors. Conversely, the committee and plan also should address factors that support the resilience of students as identified in the California Health Kids, Resiliency, and Youth Development Manual.

The safety strategies described in the plan promote school attendance by creating environments where students feel safe. Other strategies include increasing connections to school by offering a variety of extracurricular and student club activities, academic support such as tutoring, and expanded school programs and service-learning.  A key part of prevention is the development of a welcoming school climate for students, parents, and the community. Possible strategies to encourage parents to partner with the school on attendance and/or behavior issues include:

• Offering cross-age teaching or adult mentoring.
  
  
• Developing an effective communication system through attendance cards, parent portals, or automated calling systems for emergencies/attendance.
  
  
• Conducting orientation meetings for parents and other adults who care about the student where attendance and/or behavior is discussed.
  
  
• Including high expectations for attendance and behavior in the student handbook.
  
  
• Providing interpreters for meetings.
  
  
• Ensuring that documents and signs are in multiple languages for families from linguistically diverse backgrounds.
  
  
• Establishing education programs for parents and other key adults to encourage them to come to the school.

Central to prevention in the SARB process is school leadership. School site and district leaders must commit to the creation of a culture of positive attendance. This culture should be about the overall welfare and success of students, rather than just focusing on school revenue and ADA.

School leadership:

• Welcomes students, staff, and the community to school.
  
  
• Requires staff to take accurate daily attendance.
  
  
• Holds staff accountable for classroom attendance.
  
  
• Regularly reviews attendance and chronic absence data to identify at-risk students and identifies troubling patterns that require programmatic solutions.
  
  
• Encourages staff to call absent students with, “We missed” and “We care” messages.
  
  
• Expects staff to have positive attendance.
  
  
• Praises regular attendance of students and staff.
  
  
• Arranges for trainings related to bullying and harassment.
  
  
• Intervenes immediately when any bullying, harassment, or other violations of discipline policy and procedures occur.
  
  
• Arranges for professional development related to cultural competency.
  
  
• Arranges for professional development that encourages asset-based approaches to behavioral intervention and the reduction of exclusionary disciplinary practices, such as suspensions and expulsions.