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A Conversation with You… How can we as a Neighborhood Neighborhood community reduce school School absenteeism? Parent Student 6/25/2015 1

A Study of Student Absenteeism in Pinellas County 6/25/2015 2

• Attending school every day matters. • School systems built on assumption: children attend— and learn —every single day. Classes held 180 days a year. • Chronically absent students: Perform worse on standardized tests of reading and math o More likely to drop out of school o Less likely to graduate on time o 6/25/2015 3

Current Situation in Pinellas County Florida Department of Education Statistics Percent Absent 21 Days or More All Students (Kindergarten – Grade 12) School Year 2013 ‐ 2014: Florida 9.5% Pinellas County: 12.8% (15,545 students) Pinellas County higher rate than Florida for at least the last five years (since 2009 ‐ 2010 School Year). 6/25/2015 4

Current efforts to Improve School Attendance Include: Pinellas County School District ◦ Child Study Teams ◦ Teen Court, Truancy Court, Magistrate Grant ◦ Walking School Bus ◦ Truancy Intervention Program, Teen Parent Programs Juvenile Welfare Board ◦ PEMHS System Navigators + Scale Up for Success ◦ Truancy Intervention Program (Sanderlin) ◦ Safe Place 2B ◦ Behavioral Evaluation ◦ School engagement integrated into other JWB-funded School Success and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (PCAN) programs 6/25/2015 5

Childr Children: Individual, P n: Individual, Parent, School, and nt, School, and Neighborhood Influenc Neighborhood Influences es Neighborhood Neighborhood School Parent Student 6/25/2015 6

Children in this Study They are a cohort: Followed from kindergarten to end of 8 th grade. All of the children in this study were enrolled in a Pinellas County school continuously from kindergarten through 8 th grade (6,169 children) Race: Ethnicity: White 60.0% Hispanic 9.6% Black 20.0% Other Race 19.5% 6/25/2015 7

Average Number of Days Absent each School Year Kindergarten Through 8 th Grade 8.00 7.01 7.00 5.91 5.37 6.00 5.17 4.69 4.54 4.32 5.00 4.26 3.99 4.00 4.13 4.01 4.01 3.98 3.00 3.66 3.58 3.54 3.16 3.01 2.00 1.00 0.00 k 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Unexcused Excused 6/25/2015 8

Does being absent affect students’ school achievement? Yes (at least as measured by the FCAT). Regardless of the type of absence—excused or unexcused—more absences decreased the likelihood that students would pass their FCAT in Math. More un excused absences decreased the likelihood that students would pass their FCAT in Reading. We saw this trend consistently—beginning in third grade . 6/25/2015 9

Characteristics Related to Unexcused Absences Neighborhood Students: Parents: School Characteristics: Characteristics: • Mental health (Baker Act) • Severe • Level of • Number of • African ‐ American mental students with educational • Medicaid medical history illness out ‐ of ‐ school opportunity • Emergency medical services • Doctor visits suspensions • Social & (elementary) • JWB ‐ funded service/program (physical economic • No middle • # of child maltrtment reports health) characteristics school factors • Free/reduced lunch eligible • Older for grade • Hispanic ethnicity 6/25/2015 10

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Policy Development Preliminary Recommendations: ◦ Maintain an IDS with timely and regularly updated data that has the capacity to answer critical policy questions ◦ Develop multifaceted approach to reducing absenteeism that includes a place-based perspective ◦ Engage the community in the Campaign for Grade Level Reading, with a focus on school attendance ◦ Include an Equity Assessment in policy and program reviews 6/25/2015 12

Policy Development Preliminary Recommendations: ◦ Increase the number of children who attend preschool/nursery ◦ Increase the number of quality early learning environments in areas of greatest need ◦ Monitor absence closely on an individual child basis for days absent and class absence ◦ Target attendance efforts beginning in PreSchool and/or Kindergarten focused on the parent ◦ Target attendance efforts focused on the child beginning in fifth grade 6/25/2015 13

Policy Development Preliminary Recommendations: ◦ Emphasize the importance of school attendance across all of JWB’s programs ◦ Develop mechanisms to identify children with mental health and/substance abuse problems as early as possible ◦ Provide help to minority parents to navigate the school system’s attendance rules ◦ Take a community collaborative approach to ensuring that all children and youth benefit from being in school 6/25/2015 14

A Conversation with You… How can we as a Neighborhood Neighborhood community reduce student School absenteeism? Parent Student 6/25/2015 15