Slade Middle School Holding Attendance Rallies
By Robin Vinci | Editor at May 26, 2024 | 6:00 pm | Print
In an attempt to increase attendance at schools, Slade Middle School is holding two Educational Attendance Rallies.
The first one was held Wednesday night at the Mount Pleasant Basketball Courts. The second one will be held June 1 at Chesley Park.
“There is an attendance committee at the school and every week we review our attendance. We looked at a list and there were about 170 students on the chronic attendance list,” said Janice Pina, assistant principal at Slade School. “We mapped out their residence using a New Britain map. There are two concentrated areas, which are Mount Pleasant and Chesley Park area.”
The school decided to try to find ways to get the message of the importance of attendance to families. The goal is to go into the community with partners like Attorney Dressler’s law firm. Dressler supports mega education. He promotes all aspects of education and has done an assembly once a month at the school.
Dressler is bringing music and an ice cream truck for the events. There will also be raffles.
The YWCA after school program and parks and recreation will also take part. Principal Todd Verdi will speak to the kids.
“We want to go to the community and hand out some statistics,” said Pina. “We are out there for an hour sending the message that it is important to go to school. Attendance matters. All these community organizations are supporting it.”
The program was done in the fall and it was very successful.
Some attendance statistics include that Kindergarten and first grade classes often have absenteeism rates as high as high school. Many of these are excused, but they still add up.
One in ten kids in Kindergarten are chronically absent. Two in ten low income students miss school so much that they are likely to suffer academically. In homeless students there is an average of 2.5 out of 10 that are chronically absent. Four in ten transient students often miss classes.
According to the pamphlet provided by the school called “Attendance Works”, younger students miss 18 days of school a year or two times a month. It means lower test scores and problems existing for years.
Good attendance means missing nine or less school days a year. Anything over that is considered at risk.
The goal of the school program is to engage families, fix transportation issues, address health needs and track the right data.
“Many parents don’t realize how quickly early absences add up to academic trouble. Community members and teachers can educate families and build a culture of attendance through early outreach, incentives and attention to date,” according to the pamphlet.
All students and families are encouraged to attend the June 1 rally to learn more at Chesley Park from 4-5 p.m.
