Washington schools see attendance bounce back

WASHINGTON — School officials say they’re noticing more full classrooms than this time last year at the Washington School district, with attendance percentages up from the 2021-22 school year at every grade level.

The math works out to an average of 42 more students in the buildings every day, according to Superintendent Willie Stone, with a district wide average attendance up by 2.67%. Most of that is at the high school level, where the percentage has increased by 4.38%.

“We believe that if students are here, they’ll learn, if they’re not here, it makes it harder for them to learn,” Stone said.

The trend is true both when comparing a grade level at this year to last — ‘22 senior attendance is up from ‘21 senior attendance, for example — and at a cohort level; This year’s seniors have a better attendance rate than they did as juniors last year. Only one cohort is an exception to the rule: kindergarten attendance is down 0.17% compared to the same cohort’s preschool attendance.

Stone credited the improvements to a growing effort by educators to build rapport with their students.

“Our staff are doing a better job at engaging students on an individual level so that they’re able to have a true connection with those kids,” he said in a follow-up interview. “That does make it so students want to come back in, so they want to be at school.”

The changes come in the district’s second year of the “Capturing Kids’ Hearts” initiative, which explicitly trains teachers in building those connections.

“We’ve also had professional development over the past couple of years on Capturing Kids Hearts,” Stone said. “Simple things like doing good things at the beginning of the class period, at the end of the class period launching students into the end of the day.”

The high school started the year with a goal of reaching 95% average attendance. The building currently sits at 93.65%, just shy of that goal but still showing improvement from last year’s below-90 mark.

Washington High School Dean of Students Alex Klopfenstein said agreed that a social-emotional focus was the cause of rebounding attendance. The school official also said students’ families had stepped up to the plate.

“We have a lot of families that are getting creative to do the things that they need to do to get their students here,” he said. “I want to thank our families who have been through some struggles, and sometimes it is a daily struggle, to get your student out of bed and get them going.”

Klopfenstein blamed the lingering impacts of COVID-19 for the failure to hit 95% so far. The pandemic necessitated platforms where students could easily catch up after missing school, and perform much of their work remotely. While that makes for a helpful tool when needed, he said it enabled some bad habits.

“Kids are able to see what’s going on in class that day, they’re not physically there to receive the instruction, but they can get on their computer and see what they’ve missed, live,” Klopfenstein said. “For some kids … if they’ve got some big struggles going on outside of school, they feel OK just skipping out on school today because (they) can probably keep up with it.”

The pandemic also made waves on students’ mental health, an issue Klopfenstein said the school still had its eye on.

The building still hopes to meet its 95% goal by the school year’s end. Klopfenstein said it would do say by keeping kids excited to be at school.

“One of the things we’re doing at the high school is trying to make more moments of fun and memories,” he said. “You don’t always remember that exact lesson but you remember the fun times that you had. And we want to be able to build some of those times and those memories into our day … yes, the academic piece is of the utmost importance, but we also want our students’ well-being to be up at the top of the charts as well.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com