When we were able to share that community and population health is dependent on the educational achievement of its citizens, the understanding became clear of the need for prevention of chronic physical, emotional and behavioral health disorders. Research supports that with decreased educational achievement, there is an increase in long term chronic health conditions such as diabetes, obesity and hypertension. A healthy community begins with an educated community. An educated community begins in kindergarten, and kindergarten is the time to set the standard of attendance and achievement for every student, every day.
At a Glance
The West Allis West Milwaukee School District determined that it needed to address and improve its rate of chronic absenteeism in order to improve both academic achievement and health outcomes.
The project’s results suggest specific interventions and policy and procedure changes that may help improve chronic absenteeism at the elementary school level.
The Challenge
Frequent absences are devastating to a child’s future. Research demonstrates that affected students are less likely to read by third grade and more likely to disengage and drop out of school. Following a community assessment by the West Allis West Milwaukee (WAWM) team of school district nurses and health department sponsors, the school district determined that there was a need to address chronic absenteeism at the elementary level.
WAWM attendance data from 2005-2015 demonstrated a 138 percent increase in chronic absenteeism across all elementary levels (missing more than 10 percent of school days for any reason). There was a general lack of understanding by families regarding the importance of attendance during the early elementary years, as it was sometimes viewed as optional or unnecessary to long-term educational success.
Project Goals
The project’s goal was to address chronic absenteeism, including raising awareness and understanding of the impact on academic achievement and the community, as well as ultimately reducing chronic absenteeism in order to increase academic achievement. By increasing achievement and graduation rates, this project hoped to create momentum to improve the general socioeconomic culture of the community, as well as improve chronic health condition prevalence.
The project identified four action areas:
- Generate and act on absenteeism data
- Create and deploy positive messages and measures
- Focus on communities most in need of addressing chronic absenteeism
- Ensure responsibility across sectors
The project used the federal Every Student, Every Day Initiative and Attendance Works as guides to build its logic model. The project focused on grades 4K, 5K and first grade. Some interventions extended to all of the elementary grades. The concentrated focus was on two elementary schools with the highest chronic absentee rate in the school district.
Results
The grant produced the desired results of raising awareness of chronic absenteeism, including its definition and impact on the community. The grant initiatives provided support for families and students with clean clothes, incentives for improvements and reduction of known and identified health barriers, specifically the effects of chronic health conditions on attendance.
The two targeted elementary schools with the highest chronic absenteeism rate (>23 percent in 2015) demonstrated a decrease in chronic absenteeism to below 18 percent. The other nine elementary schools have also demonstrated a 2-3 percent decrease in chronic absenteeism related to the district wide initiatives.
Interventions that provided the greatest impact per parent report were:
- Positive home messaging information regarding compulsory attendance statutes
- Health lessons/classroom emphasis to reduce illness related absences
- The highest health-related causes of absences of asthma, dental pain and head lice were addressed via the implementation of stock albuterol to treat asthma flares at school, collaboration with DentaMed and United Health Care to bring free dental care to underserved students and initiating a “lice treatment to go” package for families without financial resources to treat lice occurrence
- Families in transition were provided with an opportunity to have clean clothes for their student via providing laundry to use at school facilities already in place. Parents and students reported appreciation for this intervention as to reduce social stigma and to boost confidence in attending school. This program is continuing at the elementary school and has also expanded to the alternative high school for older students who may be living from household to household or without family resources.
- Inclusion of attendance data on all problem solving/multi-tiered systems of support team checklists regarding student academic performance and/or behavior concerns. The inclusion of attendance data on the checklists keeps the importance of attendance front and center for all intervention meetings and discussions.
- The intervention focused on educating school district families and community that, beginning in 4-year old kindergarten, every student, every day attendance is the path to success.
As a result of this project, the West Allis-West Milwaukee School District saw an overall score increase of 4.1 on the State of Wisconsin District Report Card moving from 68.1 on the 2016-2017 to 72.2 on the 2017-2018 scorecard.
Lasting Impact
The project’s resulting procedures and updated policy will ensure that project improvements are sustained into the future:
- The first year of the grant established an Attendance Committee tasked with refining the district’s reactive absentee procedures. The attendance committee streamlined the district attendance procedures to ensure that there are consistent procedures among all schools, which had not been the case in the past. The committee has now developed procedures, checklists and a form that will be proactive in manner and provide information to families prior to reaching the level of chronic absenteeism.
- An updated policy and procedure document was presented to the West Allis West Milwaukee school board on March 27, 2017 and was adopted. A procedural checklist was also developed to document the attendance/absence steps to provide consistency in the timeline and process across the district. Official policy names include: Attendance Philosophy, Board Policy 430 and Compulsory Student Attendance, Board Policy 431 and 431R.
- There will be continued University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Population Health Nursing Student interventions in the district’s elementary schools. The process for addressing absenteeism before it becomes chronic will continue via automated reports and family letters and district procedures.
Now that chronic absenteeism has become a part of an individual school’s and the school district’s state report card, the project team expects this effort will continue as it will influence long-term impact on school district achievement and funding.