As Fredericksburg area school officials highlight September as National Attendance Awareness Month, they are conscious to promote that encouraging students to attend school regularly is a yearlong effort.
“We want to make sure that all year we’re reminding students about good attendance,” said Andrea Bumbrey, the director of student achievement at Fredericksburg City Public Schools.
Area school divisions are coming up with unique ways to stress the Virginia Department of Education’s “Attendance Matters” initiative, especially since chronic absenteeism rates are one factor in school accreditation, which could impact state funding.
A presentation from Bumbrey at the Sept. 9 FCPS School Board meeting noted various rewards programs, including classroom visits from school mascots, a preschool popsicle celebration, weekly morning motivational messages about attendance and a pop-up booth with a prize wheel at James Monroe High School.
The school with the best attendance will get a flag to display each month along with a certificate to showcase in the building at the end of the school year.
City schools hired a family connections liaison this year to check on families in need of support with getting their children to school. Bumbrey’s presentation showed that during the first 18 days of school, an average of 23.7% of students at the four schools missed at least one day.
City schools’ chronic absenteeism rate was 25.2% in 2022-23 and officials are awaiting the complete 23-24 report, which is expected by the end of this month.
“The emphasis is not on perfect attendance. The emphasis is on good and improved attendance,” said Bumbrey who will update the school board on chronic absenteeism each month. “So, we want to make sure that we’re recognizing kids when they improve their attendance and recognizing those who have good attendance.”
No ordinary rewards
The VDOE announced that the chronic absenteeism rate in Virginia fell from 19.3% to 16.1% from 2022-23 to 2023-24 although each individual division does not yet have its completed data. All five area school divisions — Caroline, Fredericksburg, King George, Spotsylvania and Stafford — were above the state average in 2022-23.
Like Fredericksburg, Caroline County Public Schools (23.3% chronic absenteeism rate in 2022-23) heavily emphasize celebrating attendance this school year.
Funds were allotted to each school to develop various initiatives to battle chronic absenteeism, which is defined by the VDOE as missing 10% or more of the school year, including excused and unexcused absences as well as suspensions.
For a 180-day school year, that is equivalent to 18 days per year.
Caroline High School came up with an initiative by which any students who attend school all day 90% of the time between Sept. 6 and Oct. 10 will be entered into a grade-level raffle for custom Jordan sneakers or custom Nike Dunks. Anyone with perfect attendance in that timeframe receives two entries in the raffle.
Bowling Green Elementary School has an end-of-year celebration planned for all students who have less than five unexcused early dismissals. There are also “attend dances” planned for students who meet attendance goals.
Rachel Wheeler, the division’s student support services coordinator, said officials must weigh rewarding students without punishing youth who are unable to hit the mark for various reasons.
“I think every school really does that differently,” Wheeler said … “We have attendance teams that meet at each school, and they look at making attendance plans for students as more of a support role than punitive measures. Once they get to 10 or more absences, we start talking about what punitive measures would look like.”
Wheeler said Caroline also partners with the Cook Center to offer free mental health services to any students who may be missing school because of that issue.
The division recently began participating in a SchoolStatus program called “Attend,” which will automate a lot of the duties of support staff including delivering letters to parents whose children are chronically absent. Attend will also provide data on division attendance trends and barriers to attendance.
“Attendance is the No. 1 predictor of dropout and graduation rates,” SchoolStatus representative Sara Gardner told the Caroline School Board on Sept. 9.
Not looking to punish
The VDOE suggests division-level and school-level attendance teams.
The division attendance teams review and refine attendance policies to be personalized and proactive, among other duties, while the school-level teams analyze individual student data and trends.
Virginia law on truancy states that if a parent is intentionally noncompliant in sending their child to school or the child is resisting the parent’s efforts to comply, the school attendance officer may file a complaint with the juvenile and domestic relations court alleging the student needs supervision.
But that is mostly a last-ditch effort.
“Our goal is we’d rather not take families to court,” Bumbrey said. “There is a such thing as court diversion where we can have that first, and hopefully that will help with attendance before standing before the judge. It’s not our goal to have families stand before a judge to get them to attend school.”
King George County Schools, which had a chronic absenteeism rate of 20.9% in 2022-23, also has several initiatives to promote attendance. Coordinator of Communications Amanda Higgins said all schools have regular attendance meetings with administrative teams to identify at-risk students. Phone calls and home visits are conducted as intervention methods when troubling trends occur.
Higgins noted that the attendance initiatives also fall under Project KIND and Character Strong which focus on multiple aspects of student life, including school culture and climate, student and parent engagement, academic achievement and other concerns.
The Breakfast Club is a program in county elementary schools wherein a small group of students from each grade level meet weekly for six to eight weeks as soon as they arrive in the morning.
“These clubs promote punctuality and responsibility which is crucial for students’ academic and professional development,” Higgins said. “It encourages regular attendance, enhancing engagement and maximizing educational outcomes.”
‘If they’re not here, they can’t learn’
Bumbrey said students who do not come to school on a regular basis between kindergarten and second grade will have a harder time learning to read by third grade.
“Continuing to not have good attendance through middle school, students struggle more with their grades and will be at-risk of not walking across the stage to get a diploma in their 12th-grade year,” Bumbrey said.
Spotsylvania County Public Schools cited statistics that show ninth-grade attendance is a better predictor of graduation rates than eighth-grade test scores.
Spotsylvania Superintendent Clint Mitchell is a member of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s task force on chronic absenteeism. One of Mitchell’s initial goals was to implement an attendance task force at each of the schools in the division, which had the highest chronic absenteeism rate in the area in 2022-23 at 25.6%. Spotsylvania schools saw improvement at each level in 2023-24, going from 20.9% to 14.9% for elementary; 23.4% to 20.1% for middle; and 32.7% to 27.2% for high school, according to data provided by Director of Communications and Community Engagement Rene Daniels.
At the beginning of September, Spotsylvania launched the “All Together Every Day” attendance awareness campaign with a video from Mitchell. Last week, the division shared a video contest opportunity for students with the theme “Why Attending School is Important.”
Three winners will be named — one from elementary, middle, and high — with the winning videos featured on the division website and social media. Throughout the year, Spotsylvania schools will share parent and student resources to reinforce the importance of attendance.
The division notes on its website that, in order to stay engaged, students should miss no more than nine days of school and that frequent absences are a sign that a student is losing interest in school, struggling academically, dealing with a bully or another issue. Spotsylvania encourages parents and students alike to know the attendance policy and incentives.
In Stafford, the division filmed a “We Come to School” YouTube video last school year and late in the year had its 2022-23 chronic absenteeism rate of 21% down to 18%.
Stafford’s website states that the school system “continues efforts to ensure that all students fully benefit from their education by attending school regularly.”
The division asked parents to keep a consistent bedtime routine and lay out school necessities the night before, while requesting that parents “please ensure students attend school all day, every day.”
“Students need to be in school to learn. If they’re not here, they can’t learn,” Bumbrey said. “But coming to school is not just about student achievement. It’s about learning how to get along with peers, teachers, developing relationships … There are a lot of things that come with being in a school setting.”
