School district sees improvement in attendance

The Creston School Board received an update on work the district has been doing to improve student attendance. Increasing attendance rates has been a district priority since the Iowa senate’s ruling regarding chronic absenteeism.

Senate File 2435, signed into law on May 9, 2024, requires stricter attendance rules than in previous years. With the new policy, 8.5 unexcused absences per semester will cause a letter to be mailed home. Twelve unexcused absences per semester will cause a truancy meeting and an attendance contract. Eighteen unexcused absences per semester will cause a referral to the county attorney.

Some, but not all, unexcused absences include planned vacations or trips, illnesses without a doctor’s note, car trouble or accidents, work (even in a family-owned business) and non-school supervised college visits.

During the September 2024 school board meeting, CCSD Superintendent Deron Stender said the school’s previous policy was stricter than the new required numbers from the state. However, the school has put in more systems to keep students on track.

One way the district is working to fight chronic absenteeism in students is through more communication with parents and standardizing attendance protocol through the schools. The district also has a team of school staff, administration and local officials meeting biweekly to talk over what is and isn’t working.

“What our team has done that’s helped out moving forward where we’re going is just the communication to parents and our own staff,” team member and alternative school instructor Bryce Schafer said. “This legislation was so new when it came down the pipe fast. Having them understand, educate them on what that looks like, what the teeth behind that legislation is, [is important] to help with that education process.”

One member of the district team fighting chronic absenteeism is juvenile court liaison Maigen Carrall. Schafer said Carrall and activities director Scott Driskell spent the summer working with the county attorney’s office to prepare for the 2024/25 school year.

“I know that [Carrall] and Mr. Driskell have done an excellent job over the summer months and coming into the beginning of the first semester of creating a really good relationship with our county attorney,” Schafer said. “We all know moving forward with a lot of these chronic absenteeisms, we’ll be going to the county attorney, so it’s integral for [Carrall] to be a part of the conversation with that moving forward.”

Schafer said only four Creston students had been referred to the county attorney so far this year. While numbers from previous years were not given, Schafer said this was a significant drop. Before going to the county attorney, students work with the school to form a contract in the hopes of increasing attendance.

“That’s the step before we send to the county attorney, we try to get them on a contract to deal with some of their chronic absenteeism. We have 13 total in the high school, we have four total in the middle school, and we have one elementary. Thirteen total in the high school, that’s 2.5% of the entire high school enrollment,” Schafer said. “[Carrall] again wanted me to reiterate to you guys that she has seen a huge drop in some of her big high flier chronic absentee students. With us as an entire district rather than building to building, attacking this, I think we’re moving in the right direction.”

While the attendance team says they’ve seen an improvement in student attendance, Schafer said comparable numbers are not available, due to a change in how attendance is taken.

“High school has blocks, so they were taking it every block. Elementary was taking it once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Middle school was taking attendance every single period as they were going into the classroom,” Schafer said. “All of that data was just really tough to decipher, and now we’re taking it all consistently across the district the same way, which cleans that up.”

Schafer said the plan is to come back in a few months to compare attendance records between the two semesters, with more clarity on the improvement with second semester numbers.

In other school board news...

The school board approved the following list of January 2025 contracts and resignations:

Contracts: Gabriella Cannon, MS para; Hannah Fry, HS para; Treyton Chesnut, head MS girls wrestling coach; Keaton Street, assistant MS boys wrestling coach; Cole Crawford, head 8th grade girls basketball coach; Brielle Baker, head 7th grade girls basketball coach.

Resignations: Kaitlyn Halvorson, para; Deb George, cook.