September – National School Attendance Awareness Month

Article Source: San Bruno Park School District CA

SEPTEMBER – NATIONAL SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AWARENESS MONTH

Across the country, the national Attendance Awareness movement recognizes the month of September to focus school districts, public agencies, community groups, students and their families on the need to work together to combat chronic absenteeism, which is pervasive in schools across America. Attendance Awareness Month is sponsored by, among others, United Way, AARP, and the Institute for Educational Leadership.

In recognizing September as Attendance Awareness Month, California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson commented, “Students aren’t learning if they are not in class. Cohesive partnerships, intervention strategies, and solid support services create attendance teams that are armed with the necessary tools to identify and help students struggling with attendance problems. By combining resources and working together, school attendance administrators, parents and community organizations can build systems to reduce chronic absenteeism rates that are positive and effective, not negative and punitive.”

Every school day counts in the life of a child. San Bruno Park School District’s, initiative, Attendance Matters! - Every Day in Every Way, is making a difference for San Bruno children. Funded by San Bruno Education Foundation, banners prominently displayed at each school site welcome parents and students daily with a reminder that when school attendance is a priority beginning with pre-school, children get better grades, develop healthy life habits, avoid dangerous behavior, and have a better chance of graduating from high school. Each trimester, the District recognizes Superior and Most Improved Attendance with certificates to students and rotating banners to the schools who have the best and most improved attendance.

Working with In Class Today, founded at Harvard University, the District is engaged with methods for reaching and empowering families around the importance of children being in class that have helped school districts achieve significant results improving attendance within the first year of implementation. Such was the case at the close of the 2017-2018 school year with the District reporting an increase of 550 student attendance days in grades K-3 and, in 4th-8th grades, an increase of 650 days of student attendance.

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Robert Riechel

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Photo Credit: San Bruno CA Patch Archives

Source Credit: Superintendent Kemp - San Bruno CA Park School District

Web Site: http://sbpsd.k12.ca.us/

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