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PARENT MEETING Thursday, Feb 3 7:00 PM at FNSS |
FNSS IMPLEMENTS NEW ATTENDANCE POLICY: "An absence is an absence, for any reason" School District #81 Fort Nelson is constantly working to improve educational programs and services to increase all of our students' achievement. Superintendent of Schools Diana Samchuck states, "We recognize that particularly at the secondary level, we have some students with significant absences. These students are not being successful and are sometimes impacting the learning environment of those students who attend classes class regularly. This policy will target those students with twenty absences in core academic subjects and provide them with district support for distance education courses or modules that they can work on whenever they are able to and wherever they are, at home, out at camp, or after work." In reviewing our secondary school attendance data, it appears some absences have been parent excused to avoid in-school suspension or other school consequences. This pilot project policy removes "excused" and "unexcused" absences except for students involved in approved school and community activities such as basketball, hockey and dance. An absence is an absence, and when students miss school for any reason, they have missed a learning opportunity and will need to catch up on missed work or they will fall behind. This policy reflects that reality and we hope that it enables us to clearly identify, encourage, and support students who are having difficulty with attendance so that achievement and graduation rates continue to increase. FNSS Principal Bill Dolan adds, "Our students are not achieving as well as they can, so it's very obvious that something has to change. Student attendance and achievement data point to very high absenteeism at all grade levels as a likely cause." In the first term of this school year, almost half of FNSS grade 8s, and over half of the grades 11 and 12 students had more than twenty absences from classes. In the last term of the 2009-10 school year, just over half of our grade 8s and only one third of our grade 12s met school attendance expectations. Furthermore, when teachers created approximately 200 "I" Plans (incomplete or in progress) in the first semester of this year to help students complete or catch up on missed assignments to meet course learning outcomes, less than one quarter of these
work plans were done successfully by students. This represents a lot of work done by staff for very low return. "The purpose of trying this new approach is to raise student attendance rates so that our students' academic achievement will improve," says Principal Dolan. "The highschool grade-to-grade passing rates and graduation rates are lower than they should be. Too many of our students achieve significantly below provincial average in provincial examinations. There is no reason why Fort Nelson kids can't perform as well as students anywhere else in the province, but it's pretty difficult to help them learn if they are not present in class on a regular basis." This one-semester pilot project will have formal staff-student-parent contact at 5, 10, and 15 absences from a class; if a student reach 20 absences in any core academic subject class and is not passing, s/he may be withdrawn from that course. In addition to improving literacy and numeracy, we are trying to help our students become physically fit and socially responsible young adults. Being successful in school should be a student's main job. One of the most effective ways that the community can support our students is by local businesses limiting student employment hours. Research shows that 15 - 20 hours per week is the maximum that students should be working at their part time jobs. Parent support will be the most critical element in the success of this effort, so parents are encouraged to keep track of their students' absences and try to limit school time lost due to trips out of town. Another way that parents can encourage better attendance is to have their students either buy lunch at school or bring food from home so that students don't
have to leave the school grounds during our short lunch break. By working together, staff, parents, and the community can support our students to become successful at school. Please contact the school for a copy of the new FNSS attendance policy, or go online: www.sd81.bc.ca/fnss/ |