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.
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South Lane School District looks to tackle absenteeism