School district asks students to defy the statistics, ‘show up to be successful’

The Bibb County school system has issued a challenge to its students: Be absent five or fewer days this year.

September is national Attendance Awareness Month, and the district launched a “Strive for Five” campaign during a pep rally at Veterans Elementary School on Friday afternoon.

Last year, 43.8 percent of Bibb students had more than five unexcused absences, which is considered truant under Georgia law. That’s up slightly from 41.2 percent in 2015-16, but it’s still down from the 51.8 percent of 2014-15, said Jamie Cassady, the district’s assistant superintendent for student support services.

“That’s extremely high. I would be more comfortable if it was down to 3 or 4 percent,” Cassady said. “We have a high population of homeless kids. The flu epidemic was really bad last year.

“We’ve also got parents that just don’t value making sure their kids are in class every day.”

During the 2015-16 school year, 5,526 students of Bibb’s roughly 24,000 students had 10 or more unexcused absences, and that number dropped to 4,722 the following year. There were 130,434 total student absences in 2014-15, 117,047 in 2015-16 and 112,487 last year.

Bibb County Superior Court Judge Verda Colvin was among those on hand to tell the Veterans Elementary students how important school attendance is to their futures. At the end of the program, students released balloons into the air to represent letting go of their excuses for being late or being absent.

“If you know you matter, if you know you count, then you’ve got to show up to school. When you show up, you count. When you’re not here, what you’re saying is, ‘I don’t count. I don’t matter,’” Colvin told the students. “Show up for good grades. Show up to be on your reading level. Show up to be successful.”

Cassady said it doesn’t really matter whether the absences are excused or unexcused. Students need to be in school every day, and research backs that up.

Statistics show that chronically absent students often don’t graduate from high school, Colvin said. In Georgia, eighth-graders who didn’t miss any school had an 81.9 percent chance of graduating high school, compared to a 38.9 percent graduation rate for students gone 15 or more days, Cassady said.

“Research will tell you the more kids are in school, the more successful they will be,” Cassady said. “Truancy is not just a Bibb County issue. It’s a nationwide issue.”

Colvin estimated that 70 to 80 percent of the people she sentences in court haven’t completed their high school diploma. When they don’t finish school, they aren’t giving themselves a chance because they won’t qualify for most jobs, she said.

“Coming to school every day teaches them those skills they’ll need in the workforce,” Colvin said. “When you don’t gain those skills, what do you do? You take from others.”

To combat the attendance problem, the district developed a Truancy Task Force two years ago. The panel includes representatives from the Bibb Sheriff’s Office, campus police, solicitor’s office, family and child services, behavioral and social services, health department and the school board.

Following intervention by teachers and school counselors, students with 10 or more unexcused absences and their parents must meet with the task force. The panel tries to help the families in any way it can, and citations are issued as a last resort when no corrective action has been taken, Cassady said.

Last year, 165 cases went before the Truancy Task Force. Out of those, 28 citations were sent to the solicitor’s office, and there were 57 warnings and 12 social service referrals.

This story was originally published September 1, 2017 at 5:05 PM with the headline "School district asks students to defy the statistics, ‘show up to be successful’."