30th Annual Lake County Attendance Week Competition

GRAYSLAKE - Lake County's Regional Superintendent of Schools Roycealee J. Wood announced today that the Attendance & Truancy Division of the Regional Office of Education has asked the local school districts to coordinate efforts to boost student attendance by addressing chronic absences. Chronic absences occur when a student misses 5 percent or more total school days, about 9 days per year, for any reason including excused absences.

The Attendance Awareness Month campaign is led by five convening partners: America's Promise, Attendance Works, Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, Get Schooled, Healthy Schools Campaign, Points of Light, and United Way. It is supported by a growing list of other organizations including the Ad Council and www.BoostUp.org.

Research cited by Attendance Work's website proves that students who are chronically absent in Kindergarten and 1st grade are far less likely to read proficiently by 3rd grade. By the 6th grade, if a student continues to be chronically absent, it is a leading indicator of whether he or she will drop out of high school. In the 9th grade, chronic absences are a better indicator than test scores of a student's likelihood to graduate from high school.

This attendance awareness campaign is not new to Lake County. This is the 30th year that the Regional Office of Education will be hosting an Attendance Week Competition for Lake County Schools. They have invited all Lake County K-12 schools to participate this year in promoting not only Attendance Week, but Attendance Awareness Month as well.

During the month of September, each week, Ms. Monika Schwander, Director of the Attendance & Truancy Division will send Administrators in Lake County schools tips on improving attendance from the http://www.attendanceworks.org/attendancemonth/ website. For week of September 10-14th, so far, 109 schools have signed up to participate in a county-wide competition in which they will be promoting school attendance through special activities and projects which they have developed. Local businesses and parent groups may also be called upon to make the event a real community effort.

To celebrate the end of Attendance Awareness Month, on September 28, the Regional Office of Education will host at Top Ten Awards Ceremony at the Grayslake Campus of the College of Lake County. At the ceremony, four groups of the ten schools reporting the top attendance average will receive special recognition from the Regional Superintendent of Schools, Roycealee Wood. The groups are elementary schools small, medium and large (K-8 Schools) and High Schools.

"We're trying to do good things to keep kids stimulated and interested," said Regional Superintendent Wood. "That's why I am calling on students, parents, and the community to join me in making sure students get to school every day and on time."