Hays CISD, San Marcos CISD participate in Central Texas organization's program to improve students' attendance rates

If school districts throughout Central Texas could increase attendance by 2 percentage points, local schools could get $34 million in state funding, according to Susan Dawson, president and executive director of the nonprofit organization E3 Alliance.

That's the message that the Austin-based organization hopes to spread with the introduction of its task force for Missing School Matters, a regionwide campaign to increase awareness of the importance of attendance. Hilary Kouhana, the district attendance officer for San Marcos CISD, said school officials are taking note.

"Those were eye-opening numbers, in the millions of dollars for Central Texas," Kouhana said. "The average student misses so many days per year, and state funding is based upon students in school."

E3 Alliance is a regional, data-driven education collaborative that aims to improve education, which in turn drives regional economic prosperity. E3 met with superintendents across Central Texas and asked what issues they should tackle, and attendance was superintendents' top suggestion, Dawson said. By 2014, the group hopes to increase attendance by 2 percentage points overall in 12 Central Texas districts including Hays CISD and San Marcos CISD.

"We've proven that we can do that, and in the schools that were concentrating on partnering with us last fall [for our Get Schooled Attendance Challenge], the average attendance increase was 2 percentage points. So if we can get that across the region, it's going to have a huge impact," Dawson said.

In April, E3 launched a task force of 21 parents, educators, business leaders and community members to help lead the campaign. Volunteer task force co-chairwoman Amy Jones said the group's goal will be to mobilize this summer and inform the public.

"We're going to be addressing subgroups in a variety of different [ways, for example]—back-to-school nights, PTAs, church groups, nonprofits like the Boys & Girls Clubs and Communities in Schools or Big Brothers Big Sisters so that everyone in our community is talking about the fact that missing school matters, and there are small things that we can all do to make a difference," Jones said.

Fall attendance challenge

As part of MSM, E3 partnered with the Get Schooled Foundation to invite schools to participate in the nationwide Get Schooled Fall Attendance Challenge.

In the 2012 competition with 300 schools nationwide, Stony Point High School in RRISD was named the National Grand Champion by increasing attendance 5 percentage points compared with the prior year, according to E3 Communications Director Rick L'Amie.

MSM has a limited budget, L'Amie said, so the nonprofit is counting on people in the community to help drive the campaign's message home.

Task force co-chairwoman Lauren Paver said E3 has a successful track record of doing research, making data-driven decisions and working with effective partners to improve education locally.

"I believe education is the ticket that can change somebody's situation, typically for the better," she said. "I'm confident that if I dedicate the precious time that I have toward an initiative, this is the right initiative to do this with."

Explaining absenteeism

As part of the MSM initiative, E3 also recently completed collecting data from nine schools in Pflugerville ISD and Hays CISD about reasons for absenteeism to determine whether the top excuse is illness, transportation issues, work schedule conflicts or simply students skipping class.

"So for the first time that we can tell in the country, we're doing a legitimate, statistically valid sample that's a valid research base to understand why kids are absent," Dawson said.

"If a kid is sick, they're sick. But there's a huge difference between [if] they have fever and they're contagious and you want them to be at home versus they have asthma, and for a $15 inhaler we could have them in school 10 more days a year," she said.

Kouhana said it will take a community and districtwide effort to have a significant effect on the school's attendance rate.

"It's kind of like the leaky dike. You plug one hole and get a kid back to school, and three or more holes spring up," she said. "It's really educating parents as to attendance and how it impacts things. It's a change of behavior both on the parents' part and on the students' part."

More information is available at www.e3alliance.org and www.missingschool

matters.org.