In partnership with ADE, the Arkansas Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (AR-GLR), Attendance Works, and the Education Renewal Zones have developed a series of professional development opportunities for district and school administrators, teachers, and other personnel. This guide is designed to help facilitate a one day professional development workshop for teams of administrators and personnel from schools around the state.
The objectives of the workshop are to:
· Enhance their understanding of chronic absence,
· Highlight the correlation between attendance and school wide goals,
· Understand the philosophy and functionality of the attendance team,
· Examine a multi-tiered approach to addressing chronic absences, and
· Use chronic absence data to determine attendance goals and interventions.
This workshop works best when schools send a team of individuals that are likely to be part of their attendance team. This includes a principal or assistant principal, counselor, and an attendance clerk. Some schools may also include a social worker (if the school has one), a school nurse, a coordinated school health coordinator, or other staff who work on attendance. Time at the workshop will be spent analyzing data and developing strategies so it is important to have as many members of the team as possible so the plan can be developed collectively. District-level staff that play supportive roles around attendance may also benefit from participating.
It is recommended a team of 3-5 members attend the training to work collaborative to begin a strategic plan to support Chronic Absenteeism in your building.
Bring at least one laptop for your team and directions will be sent on how to down-load the needed data from E-School (Cognos) prior to the workshop to bring with you.