Proposal to Establish an Absentee Prevention Program for The Springfield School District

Presented By Team D:

Liz Hawkins Lin Xu

Shenwei Li Derek Lipinczyk

So Tauch Yiming Cao

To: Oregon Community Foundation

November 19, 2015

1. Introduction Missing 18 days of school is detrimental to an elementary student’s education. These are 18 days that a student can’t get back. During the 2014-2015 school year, 12% (594 of 4,931) of Springfield Elementary Schools students missed 18 days of school. That is 18 days students are not learning the necessary information to receive their high school diploma. Skipping school is often seen as a problem within high school and middle school students, but chronic absence is a significant, if not greater issue in kindergartners. Being chronically absent is defined as missing more than 10% of school days out of the academic year. Kindergarten through 5th grade is a crucial time for young children to learn and maintain good attendance habits. Absentee rates grow at a large rate throughout a student’s time in the educational system and peak towards the end of high school. Such a high population of elementary students who skip school leads to an even higher absentee rate of 31% in the Springfield High Schools. This means that 915 out of 2,954 high school students were chronically absent during the 2014- 2015 school year (Appendix A). To counter this issue and promote early student success within public schools in the Springfield School District, a district wide elementary school attendance program is necessary. This proposal assesses the current attendance environment of the Springfield School District, the reasons for these absentee rates, our solutions to fix this issue, the technical plans, and the cost for this plan of action. 2. Situation Analysis High absentee rates in elementary school lead to high absentee rates in high school, and ultimately resulting in low graduation rates. In the 2013-2014 school year, Oregon had the worst high school graduation rate in the nation with only 72% of 593,000 students completing high school (Appendix A). While this percentage is extremely low, the Springfield School District’s rate is even worse. During the 2013-2014 school year, only 64% of the 932 High School students graduated (Appendix A). The largest contributor as to why students are not graduating is because they are not going to school starting at a young age. According to The Oregonian, low-income students are almost 50% more likely to be chronically absent than other Oregon students. In 2013, City Data describes being low-income in Springfield as making less than the median household income of $39,756 (Appendix B). The Springfield School District has a high population of low income families. About 6,428 out of 10,979 students are considered low-income with 7,082 students qualifying for the district’s free or reduced lunch program (Appendix A). There are many reasons why low income students are not going to school such as health problems, financial instability, bullying, and lack of motivation. While all of these reasons lead to students being chronically absent, the most common reason why students don’t go to school is due to lack of motivation and encouragement. Parents and students don’t understand how much attendance matters, and schools lack a strong culture of attendance.

For example, in a small city in Southern Oregon, Ginny Walker, principal of White City Elementary School, and a truancy officer, Phil Ortega, made a random house call to the home of a kindergartener who was not at school that day. They found both parents at home watching TV with their daughter. When asked why they aren’t taking their daughter to school, they said she was already smart and was having separation issues from her parents. The principal then explained the link between good habits starting in the early grades for success down the line. After that house call, Walker and Ortega were both convinced they got the message across to the family and expected her attendance rate to improve. For many students, their parents do not emphasize the importance of education. Some parents may not have the time to help their children with homework, while others may not even be around to make them go. Since attendance habits are formed in a student’s early school years, students who have poor attendance habits in kindergarten are likely to be the same students who will not make it through high school. Currently, the state of Oregon is attempting to combat this by calling all school districts to add full day kindergarten instead of only half-days. Students who are chronically absent in kindergarten continue to be chronically absent through 5th grade and on to high school (Appendix C). To stop these bad habits, the non-profit organization we decided to partner with is the Springfield Education Foundation (SEF). Our mission is to “build bright and successful futures for all students through financial support and community involvement.” We will work closely with the Springfield School District to strengthen the educational value for students and prepare them for the future ahead. Our purpose is to advance learning objectives for students while enriching current educational programs. During the 2011-2012 school year, we granted $51,918 to over 15 schools in the district (Appendix D). Grants included $2,935 to Agnes Stewart Middle School to purchase computer technology for their multimedia projects which affects around 288 6th and 7th graders, $500 to Walterville Elementary to purchase “Early Reading Intervention” kits for 36 kindergarteners and 1st graders who struggles with reading, and $3,000 to create a “Learn Together Program” that unites over 250 “talented and gifted” students and their parents to educate them on engineering, thinking tactics, improvisational theater and forensic science subjects (Appendix D). Most recently, during the 2014-2015 school year, we awarded 22 grants totaling $35,000 to 18 different schools, partnered with 36 outside agencies, recruited 8 project volunteers, while impacting over 5,200 students and 57 educators. On a national level, programs such as Attendance Works have promoted the awareness of the important role that school attendance plays. Their main objective is to address the issue of chronic absence and advocate for change by raising state and national awareness, developing state campaigns to track individual attendance, and school intervention. Attendance Works also provides local communities with necessary resources and tools, such as webinars on strategies that principals use to reduce chronic absence, downloadable interactive success plans for students, “System of supports to reduce chronic absence” workshops, and keynote presentations from experts in the field.

However, no schools or districts in Oregon have registered with Attendance Works and participated with this initiative to calculate chronic absence. In 2015, only Highland Elementary School in Gresham, Oregon and Roseburg School District have registered to promote attendance awareness month in September. Attendance Works provides a national and state campaign to address chronic absence, but no real movement to enhance attendance programs in Oregon has been created. With the help of Attendance Works, there are two parts of our plan that will reduce the problem of student attendance rates within Springfield School Districts:

1. Develop a Reward Incentive System for student attendance in Elementary Schools 2. Incorporate an annual parent information session to encourage and create relationships

among parents, students, and teachers. Students that are not attending school need to participate and get their education in order to become successful. With the generosity of the Oregon Community Foundation, we want to impact the lives of low income students within the Springfield School District and prepare them for their careers ahead. We are implementing this program in four elementary schools within the Springfield School District with the highest percent of low income students. The elementary schools that we are addressing are listed as follows: (Appendix A)

3. Objectives Our implementation of a reward system and parent information session within the Springfield School District will achieve the following objectives:

• Decrease the chronic absence rate in elementary students’ from Guy Lee, Maple, Riverbend, and Two Rivers Elementary Schools by 5% for each school. We plan to decrease Guy Lee from 17.3% to 12.3% out of 385 students, Maple from 12.3% to 7.3% out of 330 students, Riverbend from 9.2% to 4.2% out of 485 students, Two Rivers from 13.1% to 8.1% out of 462 students. These improvements in the chronic absence rates will be made within two years.

• Increase high school students’ graduation rate in the Springfield School District from 64% out of 932 students to 74% out of estimated 1,000 students within the next 10 years.

4. Proposed Solution Establish an incentive program for elementary students and hold an informational session for parents. We, the Springfield Education Foundation, will combat high absentee rates using two different methods. These methods will motivate elementary aged children to go to school and educate parents on why attending school is crucial to the personal and academic success of their child. With the tools and resources provided by the Attendance Works Program we will be able to meet our objectives. It is important to target children at an early age in order to aid their growth and development. Our plan closely aligns with the objectives of the Oregon Community Foundation to close the achievement gap for students in Springfield, Oregon. Ultimately, our plan will create a culture in the Springfield community that emphasizes the importance of attending school and will provide students with a greater quality of life as they transition to adulthood. We are only working with 4 of the 17 schools to test our solutions due to budget constraints. If the plan is effective, we will extend the program to all 17 elementary schools in the Springfield School District in 2018. A. Reward System To make children want to go to school, we are implementing a reward system. This system will promote attendance by creating healthy competition and award students who attend school regularly. The program will also publicly recognize students that regularly go to school, during school assemblies. To record attendance rates for the reward program, we will implement a star program in which each student has a star chart, or calendar, set up in the classroom. Every day that a student shows up to class, he or she will be given a star sticker to place on the day of the calendar. This system will allow both students and teachers to track their progress and work toward a goal. This will also allow the administrators to accurately choose which students will receive end of year awards. To be fair and reward students who regularly attended school before the implementation of our incentive program, we will give gift cards to students who had 90% or better attendance rates for the 2015-2016 school year. Our incentive program will reward students based on their attendance rates for the 2016-2017 school year as follows:

• 100% Total class attendance rate each week- the whole class is awarded 30 extra minutes of Friday recess

• 97% Attendance rate for the entire year- student is awarded a $10 gift card • 99% Attendance for the entire year- student will be entered into a raffle for a brand new

iPad Mini 2 (iPad can be used to develop their education)

Programs like this have already been implemented in Oregon elementary schools across the Hillsboro School District and have been extremely successful. It began 14 years ago when a high school counselor at Century High School named Roger Will discovered that a great amount of students were being kicked out of high school for having 10 unexcused absences. He realized that absences had been a pattern of these students for years. They hadn’t been attending school regularly since kindergarten and no one had noticed. He generated an incentive program similar to ours called the “Attendance Olympics” in which students with perfect or near perfect attendance were rewarded with prizes every month. Once the reward program was implemented, attendance rates improved in both students who were and weren’t chronically absent. The 26 other schools in the Hillsboro district adopted this system and changed the culture of attendance throughout the entire district. Students would beg their parents to skip family vacations so that they would achieve 100% attendance. By rewarding those who regularly go to school, the Springfield Education Foundation would be promoting a culture in which going to school is fun and beneficial. While our main constituency is low income elementary students of the four elementary schools in the Springfield school district, our plan will benefit all students. It would be unfair to reward students who are economically disadvantaged and not those who aren’t. The success of our program will be measured by the improvement in attendance of the students in the four elementary schools for the 2016-2017 school year. We will compare those attendance rates with the rates from the 2015-2016 school year. B. Parent Information Session It is necessary for parents to understand how important it is for their children to go to school. By holding an informational session before the beginning of each school year, leaders in the Springfield School District will be able to inform and communicate with parents the objectives and predicted outcomes of the reward system. We will use the Attendance Works Program online resources such as PowerPoint presentations, webinars, and infographics as guidelines for the information session objectives and topics. Flyers will be printed out with statistics that prove regularly attending elementary school improves students’ real life success. The flyers will also emphasize why and how parents should be motivating their children to go to school. We will also send a copy of these flyers to the homes of children whose parents did not attend the information session so that every family is informed of the Springfield School District’s objectives. In order to make sure that parents commit to participating in our program, at the end of the session, we will ask all attendees to sign a pledge that states they will play an active role in encouraging their child to go to school every day. Note that some faculty will be available to provide supervision for parents who cannot leave their young children at home. A report on the reward program will be included in the individual schools’ newsletters once a term to update parents on the progress of the program and the benefits that it has brought to students. To encourage parents to attend this meeting, each attendee will be entered into a raffle to win a restaurant gift cards and movie tickets.

5. Stakeholders and Impact Analysis The incentive program and parent information session will impact many stakeholders in the Springfield School District. Below is an analysis of these impacts and how they will be addressed. Springfield Education Foundation will have to appoint an employee to allocate the money to the elementary schools in the district and make sure that the districts are using the money for its intended purchase and ensure its success. Springfield School District, Elementary School Faculty, Students, and Parents will have to devote more time going to an annual seminar and end of year attendance assembly. Teachers will have to put more effort into keeping track of attendance and will have more yard duty time due to extra recess, but the rewards are worth the additional time commitment. Citizens in Springfield will be affected by these students in the future. If the high absentee rate is solved, more citizens in Springfield will be educated with a high school degree. These students will be able to contribute much more to Springfield, which will improve the lives of everyone who lives in the city. 6. Technical Plan Pre-work in June - September 2016*

• Receive funds after board decision May 2016 • Set up the rules for reward June 10th • Send the invitation to schools for Sep. 2th meeting June 20th • Schedule a meeting room for Sep. 2th meeting August 18th • Schools conference to inform employees Sep. 2th • Buy related rewards Sep. 5th - 8th

Fall term 2016** • Parent meeting of school Wednesday before first

day • Beginning of school year assembly First Day of School • Weekly classroom attendance review Every Friday of Each week

• Collect the absence rate in total Last week of the term • Internal meeting for analyzing Last week of the term • Submit information for Newsletter Last week of the term

Winter Term 2017** • Weekly classroom attendance review Every Friday of Each week • Internal meeting for analyzing Last week of the term • Submit information for Newsletter Last week of the term

Spring Term 2017** • Weekly classroom attendance review Every Friday of each week • Collect the absence rate in total Last week of the

term • Internal meeting for analyzing Last week of the term • Submit information for Newsletter Last week of the term

• End of year attendance recognition assembly Last day of school *All work done over the summer does not involve students **The 2016-2017 academic school calendar is not available. Dates are based off of previous years academic calendar. All dates are subjected to change once official calendar is released Management Plan The Springfield Education Foundation will cooperate with the Springfield School District and individual elementary school’s principals and board to implement and manage our attendance program. Each individual school will keep attendance records to prove attendance rate. 7. Costs It is important to conduct this plan in a cost effective manner. Leasing high school gymnasium $80.00 Gift cards $31,120.00 99% iPad raffle $1,076.00 Gold star stickers and charts $2,910.60 Printing parent info. session handouts $1,326.00 Parent raffle $300.00 Total Costs $36,812.60 Explanation of Costs We will be renting Springfield High School’s gym for a one-time information session. Cost of giving $10 gift cards to an estimated amount of students who will attend 97% of their school days during the 2016-2017 school year. Cost also accounts for students who achieved a 90% attendance rate during the 2015-2016 school year. Four iPad Mini 2s will cost $1,076. We will be purchasing 290,000 Gold Stars for each student to complete a calendar. We will purchase 1,700 double-sided flyers for the information in English/Spanish to handout. The parent raffle prizes will include five $50 gift cards and eight movie tickets. 8. Conclusion The Springfield School District is facing a crisis with almost 60% of their students being low income and more than 31% of their students being chronically absent. This leads to only 64% of total students who end up with a high school diploma. These high school absentee rates are a result of students’ poor attendance throughout elementary school. Through the implementation of the reward system and parent informational sessions in elementary aged families, we hope to combat this district-wide issue of chronic absence. To carry out our plan effectively, we are asking the Oregon Community Foundation for $36,812.60. Not only will this plan give students a reason to attend class, it will also create and develop a strong relationship between students, parents, and their teachers. Our plan will lead the Springfield community to realize that investing in the education of our youth is a top priority.

9. Appendix Appendix A:

School Name Enrollment 2015 Absentee Rate Total Absentee

Academy of Arts and Academics 335 31.3% 105

Gateways High School 142 92.9% 132

Springfield High School 1212 28% 339

Thurston High School 1265 26.8% 339

Total 2954 - 915

Enrollment Students

Economic Disadvantage

Number of Low Income Students

Elementary School

4391 74.8% 3688

Middle School 2258 65.2% 1472

High School 2954 42.9 1268

Total 10143 - 6428

Data sourced from: http://schools.oregonlive.com/district/Springfield/ Appendix B

Data sourced from: http://www.city-data.com/city/Springfield-Oregon.html Appendix C

Data sourced from: http://www.econw.com/our-work/presentations/chronic-absence-in-oregon Appendix D

Data sourced from: http://www.springfieldeducationfoundation.org/programs/2011-12-ie-and-ce-grants/ Appendix E

Work Cited

Hammond. B. Oregon posts nation’s worst graduation rate for class of 2013. Retrieved from: http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2015/01/oregon_posts_worst_graduation.html. U.S. Department of Education. U.S. High School Graduation Rate Hits New Record High. Retrieved from: http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-high-school-graduation-rate-hits-new-record-high. Article. How Oregon schools partner with students, families and communities to beat chronic absence. Retrieved from: http://www.childinst.org/images/CI_Chronic_Absence_Dec._2014.pdf. Attendance work program. Retrieved from:http://www.attendanceworks.org/data-crunch-map/. 2014-2015 Grant awards for Springfield Education Foundation. Retrieved from: http://www.springfieldeducationfoundation.org/2014-15-innovative -educator-grant-awards/,

Programs of Attendance Works. Retrieved from: http://www.attendanceworks.org/tools/technical-assistance-resources/presentations-2/. Moorman J. Using the Mcdonald’s approach to generate parent involvement. Retrieved from: http://www.attendanceworks.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Attendance_ESP1PG_English_062614.pdf. Attendance works flyers. Retrieved from: http://www.attendanceworks.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Attendance_ESP1PG_English_062614.pdf. Celebrating attendance awareness across in the United States. Retrieved from: http://awareness.attendanceworks.org/map-2014/.