Aliyya Swaby Photo
Grace Nathman has bought mattresses and sheets for students in need, part of an effort to keep them coming to school every day.
Nathman, principal of Quinnipiac Real World Math STEM School, hosted a celebration at the school’s monthly “Attendance and Engagement Clinic” to celebrate an almost 15 percent dip in student absentee rates since last year.
Probate Judge Jack Keyes helped launch the clinic at Quinnipiac and Strong Schools in 2014 to make sure students in lower grades get into the habit of going to school.
He and Judge Paul Knierim, the state Probate Court administrator, joined school leaders and state legislators to congratulate students on being present and teachers for helping them get there.
“The partnership worked,” Principal Nathman said. “We stop at nothing to support” students and parents. The absentee rate dropped from 23 percent in last year’s third quarter to 10 percent this year’s third quarter. In addition, around 80 percent of the school’s kindergarten and first-graders are proficient in reading and phonics.
Excused or unexcused, absences harm children’s ability to learn, she said. Two absences a month makes a child chronically absent.
She praised parent liaison Nora McDonnell’s work on creating an afterschool program that 10 students associated with the clinic attend. They get their homework done and next year will be fed dinner.
Joseph Lumpkin (center), beside Looney and Walker at the event.
“Is it important to come to school every day?” Nathman asked the room full of wiggling students.
“Yes!” they shouted back.
“Do we tell you that every day?” she said.
“Yes!” they said.
Gemma Joseph Lumpkin, chief of youth, family and engagement, started the district’s “Attendance Matters” campaign this past fall to create targeted solutions for student absences at each school.
Students who are truant in the upper grades were most likely chronically absent in the early grades, she said. So far, across the board at lower-resourced schools, absentee rates have dropped about 11 percent, she said. “At the end of the day, it’s about engagement.”
Harries: School’s fun.
Superintendent Garth Harries said daily classroom engagement is part of the process of keeping kids in school.
“Students, you have come every day … because it’s fun to be here,” not just because it’s mandatory, Harries said. “We’re trying to replicate the work in other places and learn from it across the district.”
State Sens. Martin Looney and Toni Walker said they were happy their support for funding the clinic led to an improvement in student learning.
“Students have great joyousness in what they’re doing rather than a sense of drudgery,” Looney said.