There are a lot of reasons a kid might be absent from school. Manatee district honored for trying to come up with answers

The School Board of Manatee County’s efforts toward reducing chronic absenteeism earned the board a top honor in the National School Board Association’s Magna Awards, announced on March 17.

Manatee took one of five first-place awards for districts with 20,000 or more students. The NSBA recognized Manatee’s creative approach to combat the trend of low-income students having high-absentee rates — a trend that was widening the gulf between low-income students and their peers until the board and district leaders intervened.

“Creativity and innovation are needed to help students realize their full potential,” said Thomas J. Gentzel, NSBA executive director and CEO. “The Magna Award-winning districts are prime examples of how public schools all over the country are working to give students a high-quality education and life.”

Manatee’s Graduate Enhancement Technician program, conceived by district officials and approved by the board, is specifically what earned Manatee NSBA’s recognition.

“It was the board’s willingness to support a nontraditional approach to closing the achievement gap that demonstrated leadership,” the NSBA press release states.

The district rolled out the program in 2015 after data analysis showed students in Manatee’s Title 1 schools were far more likely to be chronically absent and therefore less likely to graduate.

Using Title 1 grant funding, the district stationed technicians at each of the district’s then-25 Title 1 schools. The technicians serve as the main point of contact for families with chronically absent students, working to find solutions to the child’s absence.

And the results speak for themselves. Overall, since the program’s inception, chronic absenteeism is down in the district’s 25 Title 1 schools by 50 percent.

Before the technicians were implemented, a child’s absence would trigger phone calls and eventually letters from the district, but district officials didn’t have the time or resources to address the root of the absences.

“We did very little on the side of trying to identify the kids and be proactive to work with their families so we could avoid absenteeism,” said Elena Garcia, the director of federal programs and grants for the school district.

That’s not always simple, as absenteeism is just one symptom of poverty, and technicians must collaborate with school social workers and community health services to get the chronically absent children and their families resources they need.

In other cases, a simple dilemma was keeping the child from school, Garcia said.

One technician found out a chronically-absent student was reliant on her mother to walk her to school. The mother had just had a new baby, so on days with bad weather, her child would stay home. The technician helped the child get a bike to ride to school, so the mother was more comfortable letting her commute on her own.

Getting a child a bike isn’t a big deal, Garcia said, but it can reshape the trajectory of their academic career.

“You don't think about those things having this great big impact, but overall, cumulatively they do,” Garcia said.

This story was originally published April 3, 2017 at 3:45 PM with the headline "There are a lot of reasons a kid might be absent from school. Manatee district honored for trying to come up with answers."