September is National Attendance Awareness Month. Chronic absenteesim is a problem affecting every grade level and often times leads to systemic issues that follow a student throughout their educational career. Poor attendance will affect whether a district increases kindergarten readiness, advances third grade reading, narrows achievement gaps and increases graduation rates. Efforts to improve schools are negated when students aren’t in class to benefit. Too much absenteeism can cause so much student churn that it slows down instruction for entire classrooms. In states like Florida where funding is tied to attendance counts, reducing chronic absence can also result in greater financial resources for the entire district. Research shows that chronic absence as early as prekindergarten and kindergarten is associated with lower third grade reading scores. By sixth grade it becomes a leading indicator that a student will drop out of high school. In ninth grade, it’s a stronger indicator of dropout than eighth grade test scores. This resolution is inteded to raise awareness of the issue throughotu our community.

This proclamation will help increase awareness in our community of the major issues that are caused by excessive absenteeism.

The Clay County School District has always encouraged students to attend school whenever possible. Clay county's dedicated school social workers, working in conjunction with parents, teachers, and administrators, work to identify issues causing excessive absenteeism and strive to provide additional resources to help families correct the problem.

By approving this proclamation, the Clay County School Board will help raise awareness of the serious issues surrounding student absence from school. Missing classes, even if a student only misses 10% of classes, has been shown to lead to systemic issues that will affect the student throughout the remainder of the educational career. Improving student attendance helps improve the overall health of the community as kids have less time to get into trouble, develop a more comprehensive education leading to a more desirable workforce, and increase overall FTE dollars from the state when we have more students present throughout the year.

This proclamation will help raise awareness in the community of issues caused by student absenteeism and help the school district reduce overall absences.

Approve the proclamation.