Iowa Chronic Absenteeism Advisory Council has released four recommendations to help school districts that have too many students missing class. Governor Terry Branstad’s Special Assistant for Education, Linda Fandel, was part of the group. “The first recommendation is to establish a uniform way to define an track chronic absenteeism,” Fandel says. ” And that definition is missing 10 percent or more of school for any reason — excused or unexcused. In Iowa if a student misses 10 percent of school, at a minimum that’s 18 days, and that’s nearly a month of school.”

The Department of Education says an average of eight-point-three percent of school kids are chronically absent across the state. “The second recommendation is to launch a statewide campaign to raise awareness about the importance of good attendance and the impact of chronic absenteeism on student success,” Fandel says. She says a study by the Child & Family Policy Center shows the impact of kids missing school. “Students who were chronically absent were less likely to be reading proficiently by the end of third grad. So the council wanted to launch a campaign to raise awareness about the need to step up and address the problem,” Fandel says.

She says many school districts already make promoting good attendance a high priority and some offer extra support to families facing barriers. That includes efforts in Council Bluffs, Cardinal, Denison, Des Moines and Muscatine. The third recommendation is to create a statewide mechanism for disseminating best practices and resources to schools.  “The fourth recommendation is to establish an advisory group through the Iowa Department of Education to explore how to better collaborate across systems and with families to reduce chronic absenteeism,” according to Fandel. “And that’s getting at the fact that a lot of different systems and organizations are involved in helping address chronic absenteeism and and we want to maximize communication and cooperation to help them get services to schools.”

The group met once a month from August through November, and has now forwarded their recommendations to the governor. “Now the governor and Lieutenant governor will look at these recommendations and consider the next steps.

The Council’s report can be found here https://governor.iowa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2016%20Iowa%20Chronic%20Absenteeism%20Advisory%20Council%20Report%20-%20Final.pdf.

(Radio Iowa)