Karla Martinez, attendance and behavior interventionist at Great Bend High School, spoke to Freshman and Sophomore JAG-K students during class on Friday. Before helping students set attendance goals for the school year, Martinez first explained what truancy is and how missing just two days of school each month ads up to 18 days or 10% of the school year.
The opening days of school conjure up images of backpacks stuffed with notebooks and unsharpened pencils, bulletin boards freshly decorated by teachers, and students showing off new clothes to old friends. But even in these early days of the new school year, some students already are heading toward academic trouble: They’re missing too many days of school.
Across the country, nearly 8 million students miss nearly a month of school every year—absences that can correlate with poor performance at every grade level. This trend starts as early as kindergarten and continues through high school, contributing to achievement gaps and ultimately to dropout rates. In our community, attendance rates reported in 2018 were 92.7, falling short of the State average of 94.5.
(Read more: Great Bend Post)