Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Attendance topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Yakima School District reports steady daily attendance at 89%; OSPI regular attendance shows preliminary rise
Summary
The district reported a year-to-date daily average attendance of 89%, stable from last year, and preliminary OSPI figures indicate a rise in the state's regular-attendance metric. Officials urged community partnerships to address chronic absenteeism tied to poverty and housing instability.
Omar Santoy, the district's executive director of student services, told the Yakima School Board on Jan. 6 that the district's year-to-date daily average attendance is 89%, which he described as the metric the district believes is most closely tied to students' seat time and classroom learning.
"If we see daily average attendance rate go up, we believe that all the other metrics will go up," Santoy said, adding that raising the daily average is "kind of making the water rise" so that other attendance measures improve.
Why it matters: Attendance is closely correlated with achievement. Board members pressed for research on the causes of chronic absenteeism and for targeted, school-level interventions for students facing housing instability or transportation and health barriers.
Santoy presented three ways the district monitors attendance: the strategic-plan metric (students enrolled at the start of the year who attend at least 171 of 180 days), OSPI's definition of "regular attendance" (90% attendance of days enrolled), and the district's daily average attendance (period-by-period counts in Skyward). He said the district's 2019 baseline for the strategic-plan metric was about 50% (10 out of 20 students) and that recent years showed recovery but the 95% strategic target remains a long-term goal.
Santoy said preliminary OSPI data showed a district-level uptick in the state's regular-attendance metric from 63.5% (22-23) to a preliminary 66.2% for the most recent reporting period; he cautioned OSPI figures were not yet final. The district's daily average attendance remained at 89% at the time of the report.
Board members asked about causes and interventions. Director Navarro sought evidence about the drivers of low attendance among lower-income students. Santoy said correlation, not proven causation, links poverty-related factors and attendance, and he identified likely contributors including unstable housing, unreliable transportation, health and childcare issues. He called for continued partnership with community organizations, churches and businesses to address barriers.
Santoy highlighted school-level strategies: a PBIS professional learning team focused on attendance, building-level teams that set goals and exchange practices, home liaison outreach, and targeted school-based interventions such as behavior specialists and reading interventionists working with families. He noted that homeroom- and period-level tracking (Skyward) produces different numbers than OSPI's methodology and that those measurement differences explain apparent discrepancies.
Ending: Santoy recommended the board continue to track multiple attendance metrics and support district partnerships to address the non-academic obstacles that often drive chronic absenteeism. Directors said they wanted deeper analysis of the causes and additional data on student mobility and the number of students enrolled for the full 180 days.
