My main topic is absenteeism and the second one is the Healthy Teen survey. The current healthy teen survey.

Gordon Clay
at Brookings

I've previously provided the board with absenteeism trend reports covering the 2012/13 through 2014/15 school years. They included the average amount of time the various grade levels attend school. At last month's meeting, the information that was presented on this subject hadn't been in the board packet. A short discussion was held at the regular board meeting among board members. Even..Even if it had been available in the board packet, the way this board is structured, issues brought up during a board discussion don't allow for community input on the subject, especially to correct or inform the board of inaccurate assumptions, as happened in this case.

Two main supposition were made: number one that our disadvantaged students will be the cause of our low, one of the causes of our low performance and (two) we have a large percentage of students who are in organized sports that take them away from classes.

First. Brookings has considerably fewer disadvantaged students than Gold Beach or Port Orford in all four age groups.

Second. As far as I can tell, Brookings doesn't have any more students/per/capita in sports than our smaller county schools and we still fall behind those districts. This might, however, be er no.

These are not new data. The highest attendance rate in any grade grouping in the last three years in our school district has been Azalea and was an 81% last year and 87% in 2012/13. (See chart)

Remember. These are averages which means that every student that attends virtually every day, there is one that attends only half the time or two attending only two-thirds of the time.

There are many options to address this issue:

The Athletic Director proposed an intramural program might be part of the solution. And I agree.

Searchiing out, uh searching out Reaching out to parents of preschoolers stressing the short and long term value of preschool education and seeing if that if that is made available. In K-3, our age group that starts setting the pattern of an interest in education, the highest attendance our students have had are back in 79% in 2012/13. (See chart)

However, the thing I hear from community members about more than anything other than bullying is boredom. When students are bored they are not engaged. Some are marginalized picked-on daily by educators.

There are certainly a lot of distractions in this community to guide students away from academic endeavors.

A review of our reports on discipline, absenteeism, attendance, mobility, dropouts, and graduation rates should give a clear indication of how prepared our education environment is to effectively engage students.

An approach that I really think is a great idea is something that Superintendent Hodge had proposed. To get the most current data, do surveys with students and administrators on where our students stand versus the Healthy Teen survey and other surveys.

I don't remember ever having access to the results of any of these surveys, if they were done, but the concept is valuable. Maybe it's time for a revisit. In this case, I would also include parent's viewpoints in the process.

The initial survey could address each group's opinion about their student's interest, involvement, and lack, or lack of involvement to excel in reading, writing, math, science, etc. and why the survey taker thinks that is so..

Second point. When will the Healthy Teen Surveys for 2013 and 2015 be posted on the District web site? I've reviewed both county reports. I'm interested to see the impact of our district's numbers on the county since our school district is much larger than Gold Beach and tends to significantly skew the data. Of particular concern are the numbers concerning mental health, suicide uh, suicide ideation and attempted suicide. You'll see the information on the last two pages of that report. Of particular concern 29% of our 8th graders have seriously considered suicide in the last uh year before the report 23% of our 11th graders. In actual commiment of a suicide attempt, it was 17.8% of 8th graders and 12.9% of 11th graders.

Finally, I wondered if we were able to utilize the million dollar grant to improve our athletic..athletic fields or did we lose it. Thank-you.

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What the minutes say

Gordon Clay talked about absenteeism and the current Healthy Teens Survey. He also inquired about the grant to improve the athletic fields.