One of the biggest problems at any high school is attendance, as many students regularly don’t show up for school on time or at all, which could lead to big problems, even legal ones. Most students here at Neuwirth aren’t aware of these issues, but the Attendance Task Force is hard at work to support all students in their goal to graduate high school, no matter what.

All schools all over the world including our very own Neuwirth have had their fair share of attendance problems. Students not coming to school for various reasons such as a storm, being sick, forgetting to wake up on time, or any other number of reasons that come up, which are all fair Most students, if not all, will eventually miss a day of school, but as of recently, Neuwirth has taken steps to help motivate students to not miss school, with Neuwirth creating its very own ‘Attendance Task Force’ to work with students to address these problems. The members consist of Ms. Dennis, Ms. Dagnino, Mr. Dias, Mr. Alverez, Ms. Baltezar, Ms. Paz, Ms. Rivas, Ms. Beltron, and Mr. Mckinney.

I got to sit in on one of the monthly meetings and observe a variety of activities and discussions that took place. The team started with a bonding exercise and then moved to discuss their answers to the exercise before getting into planning for the weeks and months to come.  It was clear that the whole team was unified in their goals as they functioned in a very organized, and respectful way, listening and responding to all opinions. Eventually, the team did get to the serious stuff of their planning and some of it was surprising to see. Many topics were discussed in the meeting, but one interesting point was made by Ms. Dennis, as she referenced to the others in the conversation about the school, and how the school has an attendance goal. Overall the school needs to reach a monthly goal of 14% or less of students who are considered chronically absent. As of this school so far the statistics seem pretty good as most months except for September have stayed under the 14% or less line.

• August 13.7

• September: 16.9%

• October: 13.7%

• November: 13.7%

• December: 13.4%

• January: 14.1

But why does this matter, why should students care about this information? Well according to the attendance task force, this is the way the school gets funded. With each student in attendance, the school receives money that helps the school run. So essentially the students are the reason why the lights are on, why there's funding, and why anything in the school happens. From the field trips to pizza lunch days and other rewards that students receive throughout the year, without students, there wouldn't be a Neuwirth. 

So what is the attendance task team planning to do about the attendance problem?

Well, there's a lot to do. Currently, one solution the Task Force has come up with is determining which students will most benefit from having AVID as a support to make up for what a chronically absent student misses. During the meeting, the task force reviewed the ‘Attendance Tier List’ where students who have been chronically absent or have trouble being on time will be assigned AVID to get support to catch up on assignments. Overall there are five tiers that students could be part of, but the main point is to get students back on track with all their classes. As brought by one of the team members, “It’s a way to get students to get back on track to graduate, which is Neuwirth’s goal: For all students to graduate and go to college.” While in AVID, a member of the Attendance Task Force will work with students until they are back on track

Something else that was brought up during the meeting was the special or unique struggles some students go through to get to school. Some students live far away, work late at night, or support their families in a variety of ways, making it difficult to get to school and get work done The task force has already created a solution to these problems as they also offer some resources that students can take advantage of, such as prepaid TAP cards from Metro. This resource has been rarely mentioned over the last couple of years but is still available for students to request and take advantage of. 

Another resource that I had never heard of, is a new thing called Hop-Skip Drive. Hop-Skip Drive is for many students who struggle to get on time to school due to the obstacles they may face such as living far away, waking up late, or other personal reasons. Hop-Skip Drive provides a personal driver that picks a student up from their house and takes them to school on time. Hop-Skip Drive is kind of like a personal Uber Driver for students, free of charge. The only downside to Hop-Skip Driver is that there's a lengthy process in which they decide if you can get the support or not, but it's an instance of a resource that the school provides to help students who are most in need to get to school.

It might sound like a lot, but the reason for all of this support is to get students back on track, but there are other reasons too. The Attendance Task Force and Neuwirth are constantly trying to support students to prepare them for the real world, where missing days of work or being consistently late will lead to termination. Because of this reality, the attendance team has stated they are trying to pull back from increasing the amounts of incentives, as in the real world most people won’t get any reward for just making an effort to show up. 

Overall soon there will be a time when all students attending Neuwirth and other high schools all over will have to grow up and become adults, and the first step is to show up and be on time.