By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The St. Joseph School District is seeing a dramatic drop in attendance.
Kendra Lau Director of School Improvement with the district says that the attendance rate of the school district has dropped from where it was pre-pandemic.
"Right now, for example, we are right at about 71% attendance in the St. Joe School District, and if you look back pre-pandemic, we were close to 90%," Lau tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "So, what we need to do is begin to see, right now we just need to start seeing an increase in that student attendance."
Lau says the district is enacting what it calls the 'Attendance Comeback program', which strives to get back to the 90-percent rate that the district saw through the previous Strive for Five attendance program, which helped bring attendance back up.
Lau says the district is going into action by enacting, what they call, a 'Comeback Attendance plan'.
"And we say attendance comeback because the St. Joe School District through a previous program called 'Strive for Five' had really made a lot of gains in improving attendance," Lau says.
Student attendance was at 90% prior to the coronavirus pandemic
"And so, what we need to do is reestablish that communication, reestablish that encouragement, reestablish students that show growth in their attendance month to month are celebrated for that achievement," Lau explains.
Lau says that good attendance is a lifelong skill that is valued by workplaces as well as the districts community partners, and she wants students to understand the value of it as well.
Lau says the new plan hopes to help more students get back in the classroom, with professional workers assisting students as they come back, but she does understand that everyone has been through a lot this past year.
"Everyone's been through quite a bit, and so reengaging families in some social and emotional learning, and also school climate, how do we reengage parents in schools when for a year they couldn't even go inside?" Lau says.
Lau hopes that this new program brings awareness to parents of how their students' absence not only affects the student but also the rate in the district.
The renewed focus by the district on attendance begins as students returned.