Attendance Campaign
Every Day. On Time. School Today. Success Tomorrow.
This is the message the Lima City Schools will push out to students and parents throughout the school year in an effort to improve attendance and ultimately student success.
The “Every Day. On Time.” mantra can be seen around the school district and community, with television commercials, billboards, banners and posters in schools and local businesses.
“We want our students and parents seeing and hearing this message everywhere they go,” Superintendent Jill Ackerman said. “This should be a community-wide push. School attendance impacts not just students and schools, but the entire community. A student with attendance issues now with likely carry them over to the workforce.”
Statistics show that students with chronic absentee issues are more likely to struggle in the classroom, including on reading skills, tests and ultimately graduation.
The campaign is designed to promote good attendance as well as to get at the root cause of attendance issues and then help families navigate those issues. Parent workshops and other interventions are planned throughout the school year. Parents have also received materials with tips and ideas on how to improve their child’s attendance.
“We know there are lots of reasons why families might struggle with attendance, some that we may not even be aware of,” Ackerman said. “We need to dig deep and work with families to understand those issues and then together address them.”
An important piece of the campaign is incentives and rewarding both students and parents. It is important to reward small successes, Ackerman said, in order to begin to make real lasting changes and impact attendance beyond one month or one year.
A number of local businesses have stepped up to provide incentives for the program. Thanks to Westgate Entertainment, Lima YMCA, Open Doors Academy, Speedway, Charles River Laboratories, North Middle School staff, Championship Floors, Allen Oakwood Correctional Institution, Cheap Sign Company, Sullivan Insurance, Teamsters Union, Lima Pallet, Keller Williams Realtors and Alexander Realtors.