Manatee County shows positive progress on school attendance with new effort

The Manatee County School District needs more people like Tawanda Means. She's proven to be a key cog in improving children's attendance at Samoset Elementary School. But teamwork deserves applause as well as this year the district combats the cycle of chronic school absenteeism. A new staff of specialists is working hard to reduce a vital factor that limits the futures of our youngest citizens -- simple attendance.

In just one year, Samoset earned national distinction by drawing an average of 97 percent of students to class every day, a big increase from last year's 89 percent. The director of Attendance Works, a national movement geared toward advancing student achievement by increasing attendance, cited Samoset for its rise. Hedy Chang spoke to 200 people here two weeks ago about the criticial nature of breaking chronic absenteeism.

This is also one of the fundamental goals of the national Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, which Manatee and Sarasota counties have joined in partnership. The campaign targets not only absenteeism but school readiness and early learning; healthy readers; summer learning, and parent/family engagement in an effort to ensure children are on pace for educational achievment by third grade.

The campaign also focuses on Title 1 schools, where students from impoverished neighborhoods qualify for free or reduced meals. This year the district hired graduation enhancement technicians such as Means to boost daily attendance. Most chronic absences occur with students in Pre-K, kindergarden and first grade, vital years that lay the foundation not just for school success but for a lifetime of achievement.

Literacy cannot be underestimated as a key to both academic and career success, the goal of the Suncoast Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. This communitywide campaign is determined to boost vocabulary skills from infancy to third grade, the level which has proven to be a pivotal indicator of high school graduation and career success. Education literature shows third grade as the critical time for students to shift from "learning to read" to "reading to learn," thus gaining vital comprehension skills and mastering more complex material. That pays off with the greater possibilities for a lifetime of achievement.

Regular school attendance is an integral part of that -- beginning with Pre-K. How big is the problem here? Almost 10,000 children in the Manatee-Sarasota region were listed as chronically absent last year, the Manatee school district reported. That translates into 12.8 percent of student missing 21 days or more during the 2013-2014 school year. That's an entire month of learning lost.

Means is only in her first year at Samoset, part of a team of 25 graduation enhancement technicians, or GETS, the district stationed at all Title 1 schools this year. They all monitor absences, call parents, ask questions and devise strategies to put children back in classrooms. Those new positions are funded by federal Title 1 grants. As Herald education reporter Meghin Delaney pointed out in October, most students miss class because of illness, doctors' appointments, traffic and transportation, lice and suspension. GETS find solutions to get kids into classrooms.

Samoset Principal Pat Stream paid great tribute to Means in an interview with Delaney: "Tawanda is modest, but it's not just GETS training that has gotten her where she is. It's her personality and her communication skills and connections in the community."

Kudos to Means.

Stream also gave credit to Harvest United Methodist Church in Lakewood Ranch for adopting Samoset by providing donations of food for a pantry for needy school families and helping out with transportation of children. Good nutrition is also one of the important goals of the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. Healthy children can focus on education instead of hunger and malnutrition.

Educators and schools can only do so much, though. Parents must realize their pivotal role in the lifetime achievements of their children and the payoff from a good education.

This story was originally published November 11, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Manatee County shows positive progress on school attendance with new effort ."