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About Cottage Grove sentinel. (Cottage Grove, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 23, 2017)
B E DUCATION Section B Wednesday, August 23, 2017 Contact Sports, 942-3325 or e-mail sports@cgsentinel.com Editor's Note:As a busy summer of sports draws to a close the city’s athletes took a break this week, gearing up for the fall season. With the start of the school year right around the corner, our B section has become our education section this week with stories about the upcoming year in the South Lane School District. For modifi ed sports coverage, see page B3 and check back next week for the return of sports. Thank you. Chronic absenteeism has taken to South Lane and is especially impacting kindergarten classrooms and seniors in high school. The district is looking to respond by building relationships. By Zach Silva zsilva@cgsentinel.com A fundamental part of going to school is the act of attending. The Oregon Department of Ed- ucation puts it clearly on its website as they state “children will do worse in school if they aren’t in class to learn.” While intuitive, this is not the case for many students throughout the state. According to data from the Oregon Department of Education from the 2015-16 school year, about 20 percent of pub- lic school students are chronically absent from schools. This means these students miss over 10 percent of school days throughout the year. By last year’s count this would amass to missing about 17 days of school. While schools across the state are grappling with how to best handle this issue, South Lane School District has made it a priority that it is try- ing to tackle. “Our ongoing problem with chronic absen- teeism,” noted South Lane superintendent Krista Parent at a recent school board meeting. “It con- tinues to be a pretty big problem and we haven’t quite found a silver bullet yet.” According to data from the 2015-16 school year, the traditional grade that performs the worst in South Lane were the seniors at Cottage Grove High School. 36.2 percent of the senior class in this year missed at least ten percent of all school days. The other high school grades also were near the top of the list but interspersed between them was one other grade in particular: kindergarten. “I haven’t seen this past year’s but we hovered around 25 to 30 percent chronic absenteeism rate at the high school and kindergarten was like 23 percent,” said Parent at the school board meeting. “And kindergarten and senior year were the most problematic areas. But we really want to get after this and see what we can do.” On the high school side, it is easier to under- stand why a student would miss more school. High school students, who generally have the Athletes of the Week ability to drive, have more freedom than their middle and elementary school peers. One of the people that has been put into the role of looking at this at Cottage Grove High School is Chris Wells who has been named dean of students in addition to his jobs with special education, lan- guage arts and graphic design. In his new posi- tion, he will be primarily looking at absenteeism and how to work against it. In his new role Wells is monitoring the link between how connected a student is to school and how that impacts their at- tendance. “If you are looking at kids who are unengaged, which means no sports, no club, no activity – and by activity I mean band, choir, drama some- thing that is in school but also requires some out of school – the average attendance rate is 91%. Which is right on the cusp of that chronic absen- teeism that the state has set,” said Wells. This means that this group of students who are not involved missed about 16 days of school on average last year; an entire group almost being chronically absent on average. “For a kid who has even one of those con- nections, and it can be any of those connections but just one, the average attendance rate is 94% which is three percent difference which is about fi ve days,” said Wells. “And if you think of that, that’s a whole lot of instruction; that’s 35 hours of instruction that those kids are missing out on.” So for Wells the challenge becomes making sure that every student has a connection that makes them want to come to school. This can be a class, a sport, a club or even a teacher that has reached out to them, but making sure that there is some element of what goes on at school that reaches students. One way that this is continuing to grow at CGHS is through the Career Technical Education (CTE) program that has been developed. This pro- gram is to teach students skills that can help them in a fi eld of work immediately after high school. “There is a big push of every kid to college and in theory that’s great but there are some kids who are really fantastic at engineering and stuff like that and I know Mr. Medina’s class can get them into a trade school where they can go and do stuff right away,” said Wells. “I know kids that grad- uated recently and hey they started their appren- ticeship for an electrician and they are going to earn more money as a 20 year old than I am at 36.” On the kindergarten side of things, the reasons for not attending school are different than for the seniors in high school. While seniors in high school can generally drive and may even be legal- ly considered adults, their fi ve-year-old counter- parts are dependent on their parents and guardians to get them to school. According to the 2015-16 school year statis- tics from the Oregon Department of Education, there were 153 kindergarten students across the fi ve schools that offer this grade (London School, Harrison Elementary School, Latham Elementary School, Bohemia Elementary School and Dorena School). Of those students 34, or 22 percent, were chronically absent throughout the school year. At this grade level, it is not only that students are missing key instruction on the year, it is the continued impact that this can have over the years. Kindergarten teachers Sarah Parsons and Amy Swearengin, who both teach at Harrison El- ementary School, noted the long-term impact that missing days in kindergarten can have. “You might not think it’s a big deal to miss one or two days a month but what that turns into by the third grade and how much they miss out on… this equates to my child just missed a full year of school because they were gone this often that sounds ridiculous but it really is true. And it’s prevalent. It really is,” said Parsons. This cumulative affect was at the key of their responses and how they try to make sure that par- ents know that every day of kindergarten is im- portant. “Everything builds: math, reading, science and if they miss out that’s really hard,” said Swearengin. “I do lots of things in my classroom to try and encourage kids to want to be there.” Swearengin notes that if she can get students excited about coming to school, then they are more likely to be there. One way she encourages this is by having a brief celebration when every- one is at school. Once they get ten of those days, she sometimes even brings in her pet pig to cel- ebrate. But more than just getting the students excited, the responsibility ultimately falls on the shoulders of the parents. “We try to let parents know that they are ac- countable for getting their kids there just like they are accountable for returning [their child’s] library books because they are fi ve. It is kind of up to the child to keep that book away from little brothers and sisters but you know, ultimately it is on mom and dad,” said Swearengin. Both Swearengin and Parsons note a variety of reasons that parents give for not getting their kids to school. The pair hears a wide variety of rea- sons from repeated car trouble to custody issues to a prolonged case of the sniffl es, the reasons are present and result in a higher rate of absenteeism. At the crux, the teachers see that the parents need to understand that going to kindergarten needs to be a priority for everyone involved. One approach that Harrison Elementary takes is with home visits. Home visits are when the teacher goes to the home of the student before the year and gets to meet with the parents and guardians of the child to talk about the upcoming school year. “[Home visits have] shown us as much as you can imagine it has. Things we wouldn’t know just talking over the phone,” said Parsons. “And even in kindergarten sometimes we see that parent once on the fi rst day of school and that is the only face to face we have with them. But I think that what we’ve experienced over the past few years is that you know… I think that we have better re- lationships and contact with families because we make that connection.” This week's athletes of the week were the CGHS athletes at Meet the Lions Night. The night featured each team being introduced and putting on a brief scrimmage. JOIN US AUGUST 24TH AS THE KARTS ARE BACK Event Classes: Pee Wee, 5HP Intermediate, 125cc, 250cc, Open Kage, Micros JOIN US AUGUST 25TH FOR HISTORICAL NIGHT Event Classes: Late Models, Todd’s Auto Body Sprints, IMCA Modifi eds, IMCA SportMods, Quality RV Repair Hornets CYAN MAGENTA YELLOW BLACK South Lane School District looks to tackle absenteeism