LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) - The school year has just started, and a campaign has already launched focusing on attendance.
The Heart of Arkansas United Way, AR Kids Read, Optimist International and the Little Rock School District have joined forces for the campaign.
Mollie Palmer, the Director of Marketing at United Way, said the group saw a need for this effort.
“One of United Ways focus areas is education and so and we kind of see our job is to look at within our focus areas what are some of the challenges our community faces,” Palmer said.
The effort will last all through September because it is Attendance Awareness Month. The campaign is called ‘Feet to the Seat’ and aims to encourage school attendance.
“It’s not the end of the only thing that’s going to make a student successful but in order to be successful they’ve got to be able to be at school every day,” Palmer said.
Chronic absence is something they’ve found concerning in Arkansas.
“Since we’re at the beginning of the school year, we want to get students and parents the opportunity to go ahead, get all that information and develop good habits now,” Palmer said.
The Little Rock School District said students are considered chronically absent if they miss 10 percent of the school year. This is equivalent to missing two days a month.
“We just want to make sure everyone knows and has the information about how important it is to be at school because that’s really sort of the first step,” Palmer said.
AR Kids Read staff said over half of the elementary schools in the Little Rock School District have a chronic absent rate of 10 percent or more. Also, a report done by Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University found almost 70,000 Arkansas students were chronically absent during the 2015-2016 school year.
Megan Golden is the outreach director at AR Kids Read and is also a tutor.
“AR Kids Read is really built around helping students succeed and educating them so that they can build the foundational skill of reading. If they’re not in school, they’re not doing that,” Golden said.
‘Feet to the Seat’ organizers said several problems stem from low attendance. Students aren’t as likely to read at their grade level by the third grade, may not be proficient in math once reaching middle school, and are less likely to graduate high school.
They’ve also found that students who attend class regularly develop better social skills.