Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Sweet Home High School officials are cracking down on tardiness and students who skip school, in cooperation with the Linn-Benton-Lincoln Education Service District.
Using data gathered from surveys of students, staff and parents, the ESD crunched the numbers to figure out what’s going on locally in terms of attendance issues. With that information, high school officials have put together an action plan to improve high school attendance.
Throughout the program, high school officials are implementing five pages of immediate and short- and long-term goals, SHHS Assistant Principal Dave Goetz said. Among the changes have been color-coded hall passes, training and presentation sessions with staff and changes to the way consequences are delivered.
If a student is tardy, the school office and its computer system tracks it and assigns consequences, Goetz said. The system is administratively driven instead of teacher-driven as in the past.
One student wrote a letter to the high school last year highlighting the overall problem, Goetz said. The student skipped 49 days, and her parents were called once. She was caught by a friend’s parents.
After that she had to have a sheet filled out in her classes, Goetz said, and it “was still easy to skip,” the student reported. All she had to do was say she got in a hurry and forgot to get the form signed.
Goetz credited the high school staff for putting the action plan into motion.
“They took it head on,” he told the School Board last week. “I just went along for the ride.”
Goetz started working with the ESD on a program it had been using with several schools, he said. That included interviews and questionnaires. Officials also counted students who were in the halls after the bell.
The information gathering and number crunching by the ESD produced some uncomfortable results, he said. The information sought ranged across the board, including how aware students and parents are about the school’s rules and procedures; safety; and school character. Parents were interviewed at parent-teacher conferences and door-to-door.
“What we’ve found (is) kids are truant, and they don’t show up to school because they don’t feel welcome or wanted there,” Goetz said. School officials went to work this year trying to change the atmosphere of the school. Among changes, for example, the names of the halls were changed from things like “Freshman Hall” and “Senior Hall” to things like “Husky Hall,” “Einstein Hall” and “Back to the Future Hall.”
Students were routinely walking the halls without passes, Goetz said, something they had gotten used to. Now, they must hold up a pass when they see a staff member.
The passes are color coded for the area where the student is supposed to be, Goetz said. If a student is supposed to be in one hall but has the wrong color card, staff members will know.
Among other issues, one of the many questions put to staff members was whether they felt the school is inviting, Goetz said. Only a little more than half of teachers believed it was. Of classified employees, a few more rated the school inviting.
Less than 20 percent of teachers believed that students know and understand rules and expectations, Goetz said, while 40 percent said they believed students have a partial understanding.
Only 10 percent of teachers thought that adults were taking responsibility monitoring the halls, Goetz said, but “our staff needs to walk up and say, let me see a pass.”
Most parents surveyed, on the other hand, felt that rules and procedures were clearly explained, with most of the information coming from the student handbook, Goetz said.
During hall counts, staff note six students are generally in the halls at the late bell, Goetz said. Thirty seconds after the bell, there were still almost three students in the halls. At around two minutes following the bell, the number of students in the halls drops to about one. After about four minutes, it drops to less than one. That’s fairly consistent throughout the day.
“It’s just kids that were in the hall,” Goetz said. It doesn’t account for whether some of the students were legitimately in the halls after bells. “It could be better.”
The attendance support model SHHS is using now has five different levels, a universal system that ensures most students are in class through a consistent system where every classroom works the same, with the same rules and on the same page, Goetz said. This will catch the majority of students.
At each level, there are students who will fall through the cracks and not attend school, Goetz said. The second level is to get parents involved through a parent communication system. This includes direct parent contact the same day a student doesn’t show up for class.
Third, officials apply consequences to absences and tardiness, Goetz said. Students who disobey school rules and procedures deal with discipline applied consistently throughout the school.
At the fourth level, for those students who are “just not getting it,” school officials work more individually with students and place them into alternative education programs or provide mentoring – whatever a particular student needs, Goetz said. For example, it may mean a GED program, or it may mean enrollment in a program that is an alternative to the standard classrooms, such as the forestry program.
At the fifth level, the schools turn to the truant officer, the Department of Human Services and law enforcement, Goetz said.