KINGWOOD — The Preston County Board of Education heard more Monday about what is being done to reduce student absences.
Attendance Director Carol Riley said she wrote a multi-year grant to fund attendance programs. For teachers and students, it provides magazines and lesson plans that emphasize the importance of being in school.
She also put together attendance challenges for three years. Incentives included $500 for each school that held a billboard design contest on attendance one year. Another year a video contest was held. Three schools participated.
Seven schools wrote attendance programs and received $1,000 each to implement them.
“The state wants our average daily attendance to be at least 95% and to reduce chronic absenteeism. Our state doesn’t want us to be any more than 10%,” Riley said.
Some students don’t care whether they attend school or get incentives, Riley said. Some care but their lives are out of their control.
“These situations are some of the hardest to deal with,” she said.
The law says after three missed days “meaningful contact” has to be made with the parent. After five absences, the principal must get involved. But parents don’t always attend the meetings, or they say the student is no longer living with them or the student is now home-schooled.
Riley hopes the upcoming addition of a truancy school support staff person will help with attendance.
Riley said she is to appear in magistrate court Friday on two truancy complaints. In some cases, complaints are made to Child Protective Services, she noted. But going to court doesn’t always solve the problem, she said.
Truancy is a symptom, not the root cause of attendance problems, Riley said.
Board member Pam Feathers wondered why more schools didn’t participate in the incentive programs. She wanted to know how it could be encouraged.
Board president Jack Keim said no matter what the school system does, some parents will not respond.
The board also:
- Heard from parent Eric Hillery, who is concerned the school bus has not resumed running on Deaker Road since the DOH repaired a slip. He agreed to meet with Transportation coordinator Jason Lenhart and board members Wednesday to go over a portion of the route.
- A grandfather asked if the bus taking students to South Preston could resume running on Irish Ridge Road. Keim said the board heard complaints about bus routes all year since the change in attendance zones.
The superintendent and transportation coordinator will decide on any route changes based on data gathered in the first semester, Keim said.
