First, they have to fix attendance
Apr. 7—If the St. Joseph School District is to obtain full accreditation under the state of Missouri's new accountability system in 2025, it will have to reverse a trend.
The rate at which students showed up to class throughout 2022 did not meet expectations. The district aims to get at least 8 in every 10 children to attend at least 90% of their classroom hours.
As of Dec. 5 of last year, the most recent data kept by the state, only four out of 14 elementary schools had met or exceeded this goal: Bessie Ellison, Eugene Field, Pershing and Oak Grove schools. Among the rest of the elementary schools, four of them — Hosea, Carden Park, Lindbergh and Edison — came in at below 70% attendance.
"I think it's necessary to know where we fail," said Kim Miller, member of the St. Joseph Board of Education. "But if that's all we hear, it's hard to stay encouraged. I do think there's always room for improvement. Our community, our school district, is willing to do that 'extra' to make sure that our students are successful."
Carden Park had the worst overall elementary score of 61%. Hosea, at 61.6% in December 2022, has fallen significantly from December 2018, when it recorded 85.6% attendance. Carden Park likewise has given ground by more than 20 percentage points, having been at 83% four years prior. Edison was down to 66.1%, from 90%.
The COVID-19 pandemic was an obvious cause of gaps between 2018 and 2022. The district launched "Attendance Comeback," its most recent effort to encourage kids to show up to school, after the spring 2020 lockdowns and the January 2021 end of "hybrid" education.
Previous pre-pandemic efforts, such as 2017's "SJSD All In" attendance campaign, have had some success. Carden Park had 79.9% attendance in December 2017, according to state files. That had improved to 83% by the following year. Lindbergh had 79% in 2017, which improved to 82% by 2018. For these same schools to lose ground between December 2021 and December 2022 could indicate a more stubborn problem in the wake of COVID-19 than what district leaders faced five years ago.
Board Vice President LaTonya Williams is aware of how some of the low numbers can be associated with children who have just started school. Some schools have reported single months in which kindergartners showed up effectively half the time they were supposed to. There are also trends in which students show up late or are taken home early by their parents — over time, these missed hours influence attendance figures, almost as much as entirely missed days.
"I think that the main issue is that in the earlier grades, parents don't really get the importance of attendance," Williams said. "They're looking at it as, 'It's kindergarten, what's the point? All they do is play.' It's not really a big issue to them if their kid is absent. It may be cold outside, it may be rainy outside, they may oversleep, so they stay home. I think the main goal is educating the parents."
Marcus Clem can be reached at marcus.clem@newspressnow.com. Follow him on Twitter: @NPNowClem
