Consistent attendance is important for school success. Yet a disturbing number of students – both in Jay County and across the State of Indiana – exhibit a high degree of unexcused absences and chronic absenteeism. Students are chronically absent when they miss more than 10 percent of school days. These absences interfere with achieving a successful educational outcome.
The data on absenteeism is troubling both in Jay County and across the state of Indiana. Statewide, nearly 20% of Indiana students are chronically absent. In Jay County, nearly 400 students had ten or more unexcused absences in the 2020-2021 school year. This is important because Indiana law considers students to be habitual truants when they have 10 or more unexcused absences in an academic year.[i]
Further complicating the situation is the fact that there has been an alarming jump in this figure since the start of the pandemic – and there is little indication that those higher absentee rates will fall as the pandemic fades.
This plan is designed to significantly reduce the number of students who are chronically absent from the classroom. It will help to identify students at risk of becoming chronically absent and deliver a series of services intended to improve attendance rates.
Update from Meeting held Thursday, September 22, 2022, at 9am at The Portland Foundation.
Chronic Absenteeism – Jeremy Gulley shared that Annie Van Horn, Director of Special Education, will be spearheading the project. She attends monthly Child Protection Team meetings, where the topic is discussed.
What common challenge are we addressing collectively?
The Goals
What are our common goals?
The Work
What are the catalytic projects?
The Metrics
What are the shared metrics we want to improve?
The Outcomes
What community level difference is made?
Jay County uses an effective, collaborative approach to help families remove the conditions and barriers that contribute to unexcused and chronic absenteeism that resulted in 19% of students being habitually truant during the 21-22 School Year. Habitual truancy is defined as 10 or days of unexcused absence.
Habitual Truancy
First-year goal is to reduce the percent of students with habitual truancy records from 19% at the end of 2021-22 by at least 10% by May 23, 2023, to 17.1% or lower for the 2022-23 school year.
This goal recognizes that bad personal habits are hard to break, underlying causes may be complex, and a new system of collaboration takes time to perfect.
A collaborative group of essential organizations implements a three-tiered school-and-community intervention system for preventing and addressing chronic and unexcused absenteeism at the earliest stages possible.
Participants embrace Attendance Works and other best practices and use data sharing to sustain shared learning and continuous improvement across the partnership.
Percent and number of students truant and chronically absent from school in statistically significant categories by school--foster, low-income, special education.
Percent of students referred to Tier 2 partners after 5 unexcused absences.
Percent of students referred that engage in voluntary services.
Percent of parents sent warning letter after 9 unexcused absence days and referred to prosecutor after 10 unexcused absence days.
Schools see advances in student success because of reduced unexcused and chronic absenteeism as measured by the Indiana Graduates Prepared to Succeed (GPS) dashboard.
Jay County’s chronic absenteeism rates improve over time and eventually are consistently below state averages in all categories.
The Grand Challenge
What common challenge are we addressing collectively?
Jay County uses an effective, collaborative approach to help families remove the conditions and barriers that contribute to unexcused and chronic absenteeism that resulted in 19% of students being habitually truant during the 21-22 School Year. Habitual truancy is defined as 10 or days of unexcused absence.
The Goals
What are our common goals?
Habitual Truancy
First-year goal is to reduce the percent of students with habitual truancy records from 19% at the end of 2021-22 by at least 10% by May 23, 2023, to 17.1% or lower for the 2022-23 school year.
This goal recognizes that bad personal habits are hard to break, underlying causes may be complex, and a new system of collaboration takes time to perfect.
The Work
What are the catalytic projects?
A collaborative group of essential organizations implements a three-tiered school-and-community intervention system for preventing and addressing chronic and unexcused absenteeism at the earliest stages possible.
Participants embrace Attendance Works and other best practices and use data sharing to sustain shared learning and continuous improvement across the partnership.
The Metrics
What are the shared metrics we want to improve?
Percent and number of students truant and chronically absent from school in statistically significant categories by school--foster, low-income, special education.
Percent of students referred to Tier 2 partners after 5 unexcused absences.
Percent of students referred that engage in voluntary services.
Percent of parents sent warning letter after 9 unexcused absence days and referred to prosecutor after 10 unexcused absence days.
The Outcomes
What community level difference is made?
Schools see advances in student success because of reduced unexcused and chronic absenteeism as measured by the Indiana Graduates Prepared to Succeed (GPS) dashboard.
Jay County’s chronic absenteeism rates improve over time and eventually are consistently below state averages in all categories.
