Pewaukee schools report steady attendance, outline behavioral supports and interventions

District administrators on Monday told the Pewaukee School District Board of Education that attendance has remained steady and that the district is using data-driven and restorative strategies to reduce absences and behavioral incidents.

Administrators reported a 95.2% attendance rate in the high school first semester and said 11.5% of high-school students were chronically absent (defined as nine or more days), with two active truancy cases and six truancy tickets issued. "We had 99 students or 11.5% of our students who are chronically absent," one presenter said, adding the figure is down from about 16% the prior year.

At the middle-school level, Paul Bersai, introduced as presenting Asa Clark data, said chronic absence stood near 8.5% and that the school had no active truancy cases at the time of the report. Bersai credited the NextPath data tool for improving early identification of at-risk students: "NextPath has been a humongous leap in terms of us accessing and being able to analyze data," he said.

Elementary administrators reported a 95.8% building rate and 7.3% chronic absence for elementary students, and described family- and school-centered interventions for younger learners, noting winter illnesses and school-avoidance as drivers for many absences.

Across buildings, staff described a tiered attendance protocol: early outreach and letters at lower thresholds, a more structured intervention at 10 absences, and a Tier 3 response at 15 absences; administrators said county truancy measures follow when families have 20 or more undocumented absences. "We have attendance meetings with any family who hits 15 days," one elementary presenter said.

The district also highlighted behavior-management and prevention strategies. Administrators described restorative conferences, check-in/check-out systems, house-team supports, mentorship programs that pair high-school volunteers with younger students, and a school wellness center offering proactive check-ins run by counselors Brianna Rembert and Allison Prather. Bus behavior improvements included assigned seats on most routes and closer coordination with vendor RightWay to obtain video and to train drivers in consistent language and expectations.

Board members asked for multi-year behavioral-incident data to track trends and evaluate interventions; an administrator agreed to provide a year-over-year breakdown by major and minor incidents.

The report also noted ongoing documentation and data-integrity work, including training staff to record accurate times and locations in Skyward so the district can better target supervision and programming.

The board did not take any formal policy action during the attendance presentations; administrators said they would continue to track the effects of current interventions.

The meeting moved on after about an hour of presentations and discussion.