September is Attendance Awareness Month. The Regional Office of Education #33’s School and Family Engagement, or SAFE, Team is dedicated to not only keeping students in the classroom, but strengthening the connection between families, schools, and local communities. Director Roy Van Meter explains the 3-2-1 Principle they follow:
“A kid likes to go to school if they know they have three trusted adults at school, if they have friends at school, and our attendance data also shows us that if they are involved in one activity. So, we call it the 3-2-1 Principle: three trusted adults, two trusted friends, and one activity,” states Van Meter.
“Truancy goes so much deeper than that because we are trying to hedge kids off of ever getting to that point. In the past, there has been a thing called the ‘Truancy Review Board.’ We have changed the name and also kind of the purpose to ‘Attendance Support Academy.’ It involved a lot of the same support agencies around our region to wrap around services with families who may be running into some attendance issues. Lots of times those attendance issues are based on things like the need for transportation or the need for daycare for a younger sibling. Our nine school districts do fantastic things trying to get their kids to school and so we are like the next step of support,” Van Meter adds.
According to the Regional Office of Education, students missing ten percent or more of the school year, which accounts for about eighteen days, are at a higher risk for reading comprehension struggles, poor academic outcomes, and not graduating on time.
