Maximizing Minutes in the Classroom

By Scott Hein

In Yukon, we have just over 3,000 students in our seven elementary schools, each of which house students in full day PreK plus kindergarten through third grade. As with all schools across our state and country, we know that good attendance is paramount to student achievement. Our district and site leaders are always looking for ways to lower the levels of chronic absenteeism in our district.

In the 2022-23 school year, our seven elementaries had a combined chronic absenteeism rate of 22.07% compared to the state average of 20% and the national average of 26%. In the 2023-24 school year, we decreased this rate to 16.1%. This reduction equates to approximately 180 elementary students improving their attendance enough to be removed from the chronic absenteeism list! We were excited about making this dent in the problem because in the end, it means that every day we have more kids learning in classrooms with their teachers.

Officer for Yukon Public Schools.

How did we do it? One of the most important things was hiring a district attendance administrator.

Clay McDonald, a former Yukon principal, works tirelessly each and every day to support schools with chronic absenteeism issues. Mr. McDonald does home visits, makes truancy referrals, and works with local authorities and resources to help students and families get back on track and in school. Mr. McDonald is firm when necessary, but he also provides resources and support, which is often a more effective approach. We like to ask parents, “How can we help you get your child to school so he or she can learn?”

Early literacy builds a foundation for academic success, and this Yukon elementary school student is off to a strong start.

In addition to the attendance administrator, our district rolled out the CharacterStrong character development curriculum in 2023-24. While the fundamental strengths of this curriculum center around the development of strong classroom communities and character building among our students, the program also provides tools for schools to use to improve student attendance. Using resources from CharacterStrong, we worked with site principals and their teams to develop a full understanding of the root causes of chronic absenteeism. They include student mental health, peer influence, family dynamics, a lack of belonging, not feeling safe, or lacking purpose and motivation for school. Some students have health or medical issues that can prevent them from coming to school.

We then created a shared Google Doc that we called the “Chronic Absenteeism Share Sheet” (example, right). Each school had a tab on this spreadsheet and recorded strategies used to support students and families who fell under each of these root causes. It was a good reality check for each site to reflect on each cause and whether or not they had a plan in place to support students and families who might be missing school due to that cause.

Attendance is critical to learning, and Yukon Public Schools has seen success in improving chronic absenteeism among its elementary schools.

We then provided opportunities for schools to share and discuss the strategies. This effort helped us spread effective practices each school had been implementing that targeted specific root causes.

This year, we added another layer to our efforts. We believe that many of our young parents simply need to know the effects of both good and bad attendance on student achievement. Simply put, sometimes parents just don’t understand why missing school is such a big deal. This year we have made sure that attendance and chronic absenteeism is a data point shared with our parents at parent teacher conferences at our PreK-3rd grade sites. Along with talking about reading and math achievement with parents, teachers take a moment to pull out our new chronic absenteeism chart. It only takes a few seconds to tell parents how many absences their child has and show their status on the chart.

We created a chart with this design because it helps parents see that while 10 absences may have you chronically absent in October, if you stay at 10 absences, you can eventually move into the green. We believe this visual will help parents better understand chronic absenteeism and the importance of keeping their child “in the green.” We also have plans to give students the opportunity to earn prizes that are donated to the district for attendance rewards. We don’t give perfect attendance awards because often poor attendance is not the fault of our youngest learners. We also don’t want students coming to school when they shouldn’t be just to earn a prize. If students and their families know they have to “be in the green” on the chart to be eligible for prizes, we believe that adds another layer of incentive for students to be in school.

In the end, our efforts come down to helping parents understand what chronic absenteeism is, what good attendance truly looks like, and how it can positively impact learning outcomes for their children. By focusing on this with our elementary students and families, we hope to create patterns of good attendance that move into our upper grade levels in the years to come.

Every minute in the classroom with an effective teacher matters to our kids. We can change the trajectory of our students by helping their parents make good attendance a priority. ■

A veteran of 26 years at Yukon Public Schools, Scott Hein has served as Executive Director of Elementary Education for the district since 2023.