SALYERSVILLE – With today being the official start of the school year for students, Magoffin County Schools officials remind students and parents of the importance of attendance.
Magoffin County Schools Superintendent Chris Meadows said, “We would just ask for everyone’s patience as we add more vehicles to the morning commute and especially to be on the lookout for all those school buses that will be running each morning and evening, but we’re excited to have everybody back and we’re hopeful for a safe and fun year of learning and opportunities for growth.”
While attendance is important every school year, Meadows explained they are focusing on what it means to have regular attendance.
“That message is nine absences or less for the year,” Meadows said. “Which averages out to about one absence per month. In order to have regular, good school attendance, that focus would be nine or less for the year.”
Magoffin County Schools Director of Pupil Personnel Justin Bailey explained that the push for better education is supported by the data.
“One of the things we’re doing this year to help create awareness around this is a new campaign ‘Best Success, 9 or Less,’ Bailey said. “What we see, what all the research says, when students miss more than 5% of the school year, which equates to about nine days total, that begins to start to have negative impacts on their academic career and what we often see – and there’s a clear and consistent correlation – is that early attendance equals later success. We can look at kindergarten attendance and that often correlates with reading levels in third grade. It often correlates to math levels in third grade. At the high school level, what we see is attendance correlates with college persistence. The more our kids are coming to school as seniors in high school, the more likely they are to persist in college and get a college degree. All of the data out there suggests that students are in the best place to succeed when they’re in our classrooms, and want to see our kids in the classrooms 170 days out of the year, but definitely with regular attendance – those nine days or less – we feel is where they have the opportunity for their best success.”
In order to help increase attendance, Meadows told Mortimer Media Group about some extra-curricular restrictions regarding unexcused attendance at the high school level.
“One thing that the High School Site-Based Council has done, in coordination with the Board of Education, is to look at unexcused absences, so a change this year would show if a student had 10 or more than 10 unexcused absences by the time of the prom, they would not be able to attend the prom,” Meadows said.” So, some extracurricular-type activities that help to encourage good school attendance. Obviously, excused absences are not included in that. This is just deterring having so many unexcused absences.”
School officials also explained that the extra push for better attendance this year is not necessarily about the money, but more about students’ overall growth and the opportunities the district can offer.
“Over the years of being in education – this is now my 25th year – I often hear people suggest that we want students in school because we are trying to make money, and I assure you that we are not trying to grow a bank account,” Meadows said. “We are not looking to make money. Now, is school funding based on attendance? Yes, it is, but the goal there is to have good attendance for many reasons so that students learn, so that they grow academically, and that they also grow socially when they’re at school. There are many objectives there, however, if funding is increased, that funding is applied toward additional staffing, teachers, other programs, instructional materials that students can use, trips, paying for transportation, bussing. All those things are impacted by that. We want to be able to offer students as many opportunities as we can.”
Bailey said improved attendance will correlate to better performance in school and beyond, which is all supported by data.
“I think the great thing we have going for us as a community is that we all want the same thing,” Bailey said. “We all want our kids to be successful. We want to see them succeed. We want our kindergartners to achieve in the classroom. We want our seniors to achieve in the classroom, and I believe as a community we all want to see that happen, and the building block – the first step for that – is to make sure our students are in the classroom. Especially coming out of the pandemic, we are seeing data across the nation attendance rates are low. We’re also seeing data that suggests our students, like never before, need support structures. The best place for us to provide our students academic supports, social and emotional supports, is if they’re in the classroom, and we want to see students succeed – not just 130 days out of the year or 140 days out of the year – but we’d like to see them have those supports and be successful 170 days out of the year. Each day that we’re open, as well as those opportunities like summer school, ESS, extra-curricular activities, our sports teams. We want to make sure our students have all the supports they need to be successful in our school system.”
