A Practical Approach to Achieving a Culture of Positive Attendance - Raising Awareness about the Effects of Absenteeism

A Practical Approach to

Achieving a Culture of Positive Attendance

Part 2 of a 6-part Blog

Raising Awareness about the Effects of Absenteeism:

When it comes to creating awareness about the importance of attendance, School Districts must look at their message and mission like marketers. Experienced marketing companies follow these steps to create awareness about their product or service

• 
  Identify the Target Audience that can benefit from their product or service
• 
  Reach & Engage the targeted audience using ads, social media, print media, and other digital means.
• 
  Sponsor Events and Prizes to engage (create stakes for the targeted audience – everyone could gain for their participation)
• 
  Create, track and measure data points
• 
  Consistently repeating the first four steps ensures success

Applying the above steps to the District’s Attendance Awareness Campaigns will get far better results than the typical once or twice a year awareness campaign. Let’s map the above steps and see what a district could do along those lines.

1) Target Audience for your Awareness Campaign: Students & Parents, Teachers and District Operational Support staff from the Superintendent to the bus drivers, local businesses, social service partners, etc.

2) Reach & Engage: Run monthly or bi-monthly awareness campaigns communicating the positive and/or negative effects of attending school regularly. Be consistent and remind all stakeholders about the importance of good attendance and how your district offers help. To engage students effectively, districts must reach out to them as per their specialized circumstances and demographics. And just like a marketer, try to understand the categories in your audience and be able to connect with them on their level.

These days everyone has a cell phone with the capability to receive Text. Districts capable of using Text and Email to run awareness campaigns and communicate with parents is the new frontier. They must frequently publish the advantages of attending school regularly and the disadvantages of not doing so. Using texts, social media, emails and digital mediums can be a
preferable medium for schools as they cost much less and provide a wider and more targeted reach compared to any print and mail campaigns.

Local Community Business can also be approached through each city’s Chamber of Commerce and offered to have their businesses recognized and promoted in District’s monthly attendance awareness campaigns using their business names, brand logos, etc. in each campaign reaching parents.

3) Incentives, Recognition, and Competition also create Awareness:

Incentives 

Offer incentives for students as well as for the campus staff who are at the front-line in making your engagement strategies work. Some school districts offer weekly and monthly prizes for students who maintain perfect attendance. Some offer incentives to the site administrators for improving the attendance of their students. Each District can come up with their own incentive plans.

Recognition 

Recognize and celebrate success, it is as important as offering tangible incentives. Some districts give Good Attendance Certificates to students every month, and some award certificates four to six times a year. Students and their families are presented with these Certificates at assembly times, making parents and students proud while encouraging others to join the league.

Competition

Grand Rapids SD in Michigan came up with a very powerful program called “Strive for less than 5”. They run this challenge each semester and have seen some dramatic improvements in their attendance culture. This type of competition also highlights the importance of attendance, provides an opportunity for the schools to keep students and parents engaged. Such campaigns highlight the importance of attendance to parents and its direct link to student’s performance at school.

4) Act per Data: 

Data happens, whatever we do, and school districts must explore if they have a connection mechanism to capture the real-time data as it constantly transforms each and every day. 

What does our data tell us and what do we do with it? It is essential to constantly keep an eye on the results of our strategies and adjust our campaigns by what the data is saying. Therefore, it is essential to have access to real-time actionable data all the time every day.

5) Repeat Frequently:

Running attendance awareness campaigns once or twice a year may not create the desired level of awareness about the importance of attending school every day. Imagine a product company that only reminds you of their product only a couple of times a year. What is the likelihood of their success compared to a company that consistently repeats the same message for you every other day? For example, everyone knows Coke, but Coke does not stop their awareness campaigns. We see their ads and incentives consistently across every possible medium. Everyone already knows Coke! Why therefore would they need to make people aware of who they are? It is because they realize that people’s memory is short and there is a constant flow of new market opportunities in growing populations with potential customers every day. In the same way, school districts have new parents and students every year and having the ability to send a consistent message or reminder about the effects of positive attendance, support school offers, or the adverse effects of frequent absences are essential to consistently communicate the importance to students and parents.

RaaWee K12 Truancy & Dropout Prevention System (TDPS) provides all the necessary tools that help schools with setting up regular attendance awareness campaigns, tracking incentives and their rewards efficiently and cost-effectively.

We encourage Attendance Awareness Campaign idea contributions or success stories. And join us next week as we explore - How to Identify and respond to grade level or pupil subgroup patterns of chronic absenteeism or truancy?