Clinton County schools have joined a nationwide effort to celebrate September as Attendance Awareness Month and High Attendance Day, on Tuesday, September 20, and has pledged to raise awareness about the value of regular school attendance and focus on reducing chronic absenteeism in the new school year.

The Clinton County School District recognizes that good attendance is essential to academic success, but far too many students are at risk academically because they are chronically absent. Chronic absence is described as missing 10 percent of the school year–or about 17 days–for any reason, excused or unexcused. That’s the point at which absenteeism begins to affect student performance, research shows.

Nationally, five million to 7.5 million miss nearly a month of school in excused and unexcused absences each year. Research shows that starting as early as kindergarten or even pre-school, chronic absence predicts lower 3rd grade reading scores. By middle school it’s a warning sign that students will fail key classes and drop out of high school.

Chronic absence disproportionately affects children from low-income families, creating attendance gaps that cause achievement gaps in local schools. This is not just a matter of truancy. Many children, especially in the early grades, miss too much school because of chronic health problems, unreliable transportation or housing moves–barriers that city agencies and community partners can help families address.

“This matters to us all, not just those with school-age children,” Clinton County schools Director of Pupil Personnel (DPP) Julie York, said. “When our schools graduate more students, on time, our communities and our economy are stronger. We have more people who are prepared for the workplace and more engaged in our community’s civic life.

“We know that we will never narrow the achievement gap or reduce our dropout rate until we bring this problem under control, and that means staring early,” York stated. “All our efforts to improve curriculum and instruction won’t matter much if kids aren’t in school.”

“September is a particularly good time to focus on attendance,” said Hedy Chang, director of Attendance Works, a national non-profit dedicated to improve school attendance. “Research shows that students who miss two to four days in the first month of school are more likely to become chronically absent during the school year. By paying attention to absences early in the school year and early in a child’s academic year, we can turn around attendance and achievement.”

York, as DPP, is constantly striving to initiate programs and incentives for students to attend class on a day-to-day basis, implementing the programs in all four local schools.

The programs also include Home Schooled children and those students, who for some reason may not be able to attend a school setting, given programs to be educated at home continue to be enrolled in the education process, and eventually receive a high school diploma or GED.

Over the past few years, overall attendance in the local school district has risen at a slow, but steady pace and York hopes that trend will continue during the 2016-17 school year.

The ending ADA (Average Daily Attendance) at the end of the 2014-15 school year was 93.93 percent. Although a small, but positive increase, the average daily attendance in the district at the end of the last 2015-16 school year was 94.07 percent.

Meanwhile, overall school enrollment also has increased this year. As of last Friday, August 26, about three months into the new academic term, enrollment stood at 1,750 students district-wide, up 24 students from the previous year when 1.716 students were enrolled.