Principal's Message
Hello TES Families!
I am happy to report that we are off and running in the New Year here at school! It has been so wonderful seeing all our kiddos return ready to learn. I have been extra impressed at how well everyone has transitioned back to the routines and structure of school. Kudos to you caregivers for all your efforts to make sure your child(ren) is rested a ready to learn each morning.
Speaking of being ready to learn, I want to bring to the forefront a challenge that we are experiencing at our school and across the district, our attendance rate. Currently, as a school, we only have 57% of our student body who are attending school regularly. "Regular attendance" is an official threshold set by the state. A student is considered a "regular attender" if they attend school over 90% of the time. Below you will see regular attendance rates by grade level for our school:
- Kinder--54%
- 1st Grade--57%
- 2nd Grade--52%
- 3rd Grade--66%
- 4th Grade--54%
- 5th Grade--63%
I share this data with you in hopes that we can enlist your support to increase these rates. At both the school level and district levels we have been grappling with the question of what might be going on. There is the obvious challenge of illness. However, a child, at this point in the year could have missed 6 days of school and still have an attendance rate over 90%. We suspect that families may be keeping children home for minor illnesses, also, as we come out of the strict protocols from Covid.
Our goals are that we accelerate student learning and growth as we rebound from the learning loss that was experienced during Covid. When a child misses school their learning progression is disrupted and they often return to school feeling a bit lost. This can be quite discouraging for our young learners. It can also add an extra challenge for our teachers who work hard to plan for daily instruction.
You will notice in the coming weeks that at the district and school levels, we will begin an attendance campaign to help encourage our students and families to attend school more regularly. In fact, this week we are celebrating classrooms that have all students present. We will also be hosting a pizza party on Friday for those students who have had perfect attendance so far this year.
One thing is for certain, I know that we can collectively tackle this attendance issue together! I know I say this a lot but I think this is the best community because of how we work together. Together we are always better! If you have any fun ideas to share for how to help, I am all ears!
With all my love,
Heather Lowe Rogers
Proud Principal, TES
