The Every Day Counts initiative empowers parents, students and the general public with information about the importance of consistent school attendance.

u of l basketbal players and students with hands raised in the l symbol u of l basketbal player talks to students in a classroom

University of Louisville football players visited McFerran Preparatory Academy on February 20 to talk about how important positive attendance habits are to helping them achieve their goals.

piechart with 95.5% DISTRICT GOAL: 95.5% ATTENDANCE RATE =NO MORE THAN 6 DAYS ABSENT FOR THE SCHOOL YEAR.

Parents

Parents and families are essential partners in promoting good attendance because they have the bottom-line responsibility for making sure their children get to school every day. Just as parents should focus on how their children are performing academically, they have a responsibility to set expectations for good attendance and to monitor their children’s absences so that missed days don’t add up to academic trouble. JCPS is eager to support parents in establishing good attendance habits. Parents can review Family Resource Flyers on the Attendance Works website for age-appropriate strategies to build the habit of attendance.

Academic trouble can start earlier than you might expect. Missing days in kindergarten predicts truancy in later grades, and by sixth grade, chronic absence becomes a warning sign that a student will drop out of high school. For students in any grade, missing more than six days of school for any reason lowers academic performance and reduces graduation rates. To help students succeed academically and later in life, parents should:

Make getting their children to school on time every day a top priority.
Alert schools and community agencies to barriers that keep students from attending class.
Demand action to address systemic barriers that may be causing large numbers of students to miss too much school.

Students

The best choice a student can make for his or her future is to show up to school every day. Showing up for school is linked to success in life. For every one day of school missed, it takes three days to make up what was taught. Students can make school attendance a priority by:

Adhering to a consistent bed time in order to get an adequate amount of sleep each night.
Being aware of the time that they need to leave home in order to arrive at school on time.
Orienting other interests and responsibilities around attending school.
Expressing barriers to attendance with teachers and school administrators.

Schools

Principals can create a culture of attendance in their school and marshal the data to intervene with students who are missing too much school. Principals should consult the Tools for Schools page on the Attendance Works website for five essential strategies to reduce chronic absence, including the following:

Recognize good and improved attendance.
Engage students and families.
Monitor attendance data and practice.
Provide personalized early outreach.
Develop programmatic responses to barriers to attendance.

Community

The more kids come to school and graduate, the more likely our community will continue to grow and thrive. Businesses and community members recognize that they have a role to play in encouraging consistent school attendance because students who build good attendance habits in school grow up to be employees who show up for work regularly.
Business leaders can:

Work with a local school to provide incentives for good or improved attendance, such as gift certificates, books, healthy snacks, or backpacks.
Host a community forum to discuss the need for good attendance and build support for solutions.
Talk to other business leaders about the role attendance plays in improving achievement and school success.
Educate their employees about the power of attendance.

For more information on how you or your organization can partner with JCPS to promote good attendance habits, please call 502-485-3551 or emailtamera.crawford@jefferson.kyschools.us.