How to keep students in school was the topic of discussion at the At-Risk Student Study Group meeting on Wednesday.

Friday, January 26, 2001

How to keep students in school was the topic of discussion at the At-Risk Student Study Group meeting on Wednesday.

"We have a responsibility to give students enticements to be there (in school)," Superintendent Dr. Jim Hess said.

Members of the group brain-stormed on the "pushes" and "pulls" children face daily.

Pushes are the factors from inside the school, which keep kids away from attending class, such as graduation standards, an early morning start-time and each school’s attendance policy.

Pulls are the external forces which make staying out of school desirable, such as peer pressure, jobs and cultural priorities.

Individual lists of pushes and pulls made by the group and representatives from Southgate, Sumner and Banfield Elementary schools were discussed. The group plans to compile the results, focus on the issues that seem to be the most problematic and devise some strategies for addressing them.

Principal Candace Raskin of Banfield Elementary said that the three topics she sees as emerging are attendance, transitions from one school to another and support services available to students.

Raskin said that the kindergarten students show the highest truancy rate of any of the classes at her school. School attendance before age seven is not mandatory in the state of Minnesota, said Raskin.

Assistant Principal of Austin High School and Director of the Area Learning Center Royce Helmbrecht agreed that attendance is a big issue.

"One-third of the kids in our school have missed 10 days or more of a particular class," he told the group.

Helmbrecht said that calls are made to the homes of students who have missed five or more days of school through an automated calling system. When a student has missed three days of class, a letter is sent home to their parents.

Still, the calls do not seem to be as effective as they once were, Helmbrecht admitted. "On any given day and time, up to 25 percent of high school kids are not in class," he added.

Students in grades nine through 12 are allowed nine absences, at which time they can either appeal or they will be removed from the class missed and placed in study hall or alternative learning.

Counselor Lea Michels and Raskin said that Mower County Truancy Officer Deb Earl has made a significant impact on student attendance at Ellis Middle School. Both women suggested that the high school could benefit from the services of a truancy officer, but Earl’s time is taken up with her work at Ellis.

"Deb drives all over and brings kids back to school if she has to," Michels said.

"I call boyfriends and girlfriends to find my students," said Pat Langly of the ALC. "And I make visits as soon as school is out."

Chuck Brandt, also of the ALC, which focuses on at-risk students, submitted a questionnaire to the group.

The questionnaire, which asked students to express the pressures on them to finish or stay out of school, contained seven multiple choice questions.

For example, one question asked the students, "What do you think the schools should do to get the drop-outs back in?" Answers available for the students to choose include: "show them what kind of jobs they’ll get with no high school," "start school later" and "smoke breaks."

Helmbrecht said that ALC students take a "study skills" course, in which they are shown how to get organized for two of five days in the week. The other three days of the week are spent in a study hall-like atmosphere.

Additional suggestions made for keeping kids in school included peer tutoring, assigning reading buddies so that children knew that they had a relationship in the building they could depend upon and assigning mentors.

The group members will be meeting with 77 students in the very near future who are failing two or more classes at the high school to gauge their attitudes and concerns about attending class. At the March meeting of the group, they will discuss these issues again and devise strategies for dealing with the prominent issues responsible for truancies.