Fairfax County Attendance Task Force Update

Editor's Notes

• #3 Thank you for joining the webinar. All attendees have been placed in listen-only mode. You can ask questions at any time by using the chat function in your menu. We will address all questions at the end of the webinar. As a reminder, this webinar is being recorded, and the recording will be accessible online as soon as possible. These slides will also be posted online.
• #4 As a bit of background, in December 2014, staff from FCPS and the Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court presented data on chronic absenteeism to the Successful Children and Youth Policy Team, or SCYPT. The SCYPT is made up of elected and senior officials from the County government and FCPS, as well as leaders from various sectors within the community. As noted in the presentation, in the 2013-14 school year, over 16,000 FCPS students had more than five unexcused absences. Over 4,500 had between 10 and 20 unexcused absences, and over 2,000 had more than 20. We are all familiar with the consequences of such absenteeism. It is associated with a host of negative outcomes, not just for the individual student, but for the family, the school, and the community. Historically, our response to absenteeism has been one of punishment, focused on school-based and court-based sanctions. It will come as no surprise to you, though, that such a response is not effective. There are myriad root causes of absenteeism – many reasons why a student doesn’t attend school – and punishment almost never adequately addresses those problems. So, in their presentation to the SCYPT, staff called for a more holistic, comprehensive, and effective strategy to address the issue of chronic absenteeism. The SCYPT agreed and, to foster and ensure broad participation from the many stakeholders involved in this issue, endorsed a community summit, to be followed by the development of an action plan.
• #5 The summit was held in September at the Fairfax County Government Center. Over 200 people attended the Community Dialogue on School Attendance, including teachers, parents, youth, FCPS staff both school-based and from central offices, government employees from the juvenile court, police, and health and human services agencies, representatives of a number of community-based organizations, and many more. The event was kicked off by Board of Supervisors Chairman Sharon Bulova, School Board Chairman Pat Hynes, County Executive Ed Long, and FCPS Chief of Staff Marty Smith. These elected and appointed officials discussed the community-wide implications of absenteeism and demonstrated their united commitment address the attendance issue. Mary Ann Panarelli, the Director of Intervention and Prevention Services for FCPS, gave an overview of attendance data and efforts in Fairfax. She was followed by VID-YA AN-ANTH-A-KRISH-NAN of the Vera Institute’s Status Offense Reform Center. Ms. AN-ANTH-A-KRISH-NAN presented best practices, and Jodi Martin of the Clark County, Washington, Juvenile Court shared how their county has effectively addressed truancy. The slides from these presentations can be viewed online at http://bit.ly/ffxattends. Participants then attended breakout sessions to discuss strategies to implement in Fairfax. Sessions were organized by five topic areas: Ensuring Compliance, Fostering Organizational Change and Development, Mobilizing the Community, Providing Opportunities, and Reaching Out/Social Intervention.
• #6 After the Community Dialogue, staff in the Prevention Unit of the County’s Department of Neighborhood and Community Services reviewed all of the input and feedback received at the event. They also completed a review of evidence-based and other best practices from across the country. These reviews led to a report that recommended an action plan inclusive of strategies covering 12 different areas: (read them) 4. Career and technical education
• #7 Before we get to the development of the action plan, I’d like to highlight some of what we know at a national level. In the next couple of slides, I’ll be focusing on information from an infographic titled Tackling Truancy, from the Vera Institute’s Status Offense Reform Center. You can download the full document from your webinar menu. First, it is incredibly important to note the complex and multiple root causes of chronic absenteeism. For every student who misses school because he is chronically bullied, there’s another who misses because she is made to stay home to care for her younger siblings, and there’s another who cannot control her asthma, and there’s another whose family does not place the same cultural importance on school attendance as others do. Note not just the many different causes, but also that they exist in different environments. And they interact with each other. I doubt anyone on this call believes absenteeism is simply an issue of kids not wanting to go to school. But we all need to always keep in mind the myriad root causes that contribute to this problem.
• #8 Second, the SORC has identified four categories of promising practices that have been shown to be effective across the country. To be clear, this is not a menu of things that work, but necessary components of a comprehensive strategy. All four are needed. (read them)
• #9 Composed mainly of individuals who expressed interest at or after the Community Dialogue, an Attendance Task Force has been formed to develop an action plan reflective of best practices and the issues identified at the Dialogue. The basic approach of the task force is twofold: Identify students at-risk -> Identify the root causes of their absenteeism -> Address the root causes (will require tiered approaches) Promote attendance and educate families, students, and the public Strategies will be developed within the framework identified in the SORC promising practices: Positive school climate Data monitoring Multi-disciplinary services Tiered responses Reflected in both the composition of the task force and in the strategies they are developing is that this is not just a schools issue. It’s not just a court issue. Neither of those systems can adequately address this on their own. It will require a broad, multi-sector approach.
• #10 The committees have just begun to meet over the past several weeks. They are organized into three committees: Policy, Procedure, and Personnel Connections to Resources Interventions Strategies are being developed now that will become a complete action plan by May. We anticipate sharing the plan, and asking for the SCYPT’s endorsement of it, at the June 1 SCYPT meeting. Between now and May, we will be seeking out opportunities to get feedback from key stakeholder groups. If you would like to help us reach such groups, whether they are parents, youth, teachers, or anyone else, please contact us. We will host at least two more webinars to provide additional updates on the development of the plan. In those webinars, we will begin to share and discuss the actual strategies being considered and refined for the action plan. The dates and times of webinars will be posted at bit.ly/ffxattends, and will be shared, along with all major updates on this work (and on other key initiatives) on the SCYPT listserv. You can subscribe to the listserv via a link on bit.ly/ffxattends. Also, be sure to follow us on twitter @ffxyouththrive, and use the attendFCPS hashtag to follow the discussion. Let’s take a look at the questions we’ve received.