Nearly one in 10 students at Franklin’s six elementary and intermediate schools has a significant attendance issue, meaning they are chronically late or absent without excuse.
In most cases, after five unexcused student absences, the school notifies parents of the issue. After 10 such absences, schools refer students and families to the family resource program, a Johnson County Community Corrections program that works with parents and guardians to help get their children to school.
Franklin elementary and intermediate schools referred 261 students to the family resource program during the 2017-18 school year, which were among the 855 children and families county-wide who got coaching and guidance through the program that year.
But of all of those families, 18.5 percent were students who were referred the previous year. That means more than 80 percent of the families who had been helped in the past did not need further help overcoming barriers to getting their children to school, and the absentee problem had been resolved, according to statistics from the program.
When parents meet with program officers, they can connect them with resources and strategies to prevent chronic absenteeism, Juvenile Program Director Lori Myers said.
“When (officers) meet with parents they do a sort of strength-based assessment on them, what’s going on, what are they doing well, what are the reasons for students not getting to school,” Myers said. “It may be an unresolved dental issue with no dental care, so we would provide them with dental providers with free or reduced dental work for children. It can be organizing them because they don’t realize the start time for school. They may think an elementary student starts school at the same time as middle school. If there’s unresolved head lice we’ll provide instructions on how to care for that.”
Parents who work multiple jobs may be referred to jobs with better income so they don’t have to work as many hours and can be home to supervise their children, Myers said. The program has also helped families find housing and mattresses for children so they have a place to sleep, she said.
Refusing to meet with family resource officers may result in educational neglect charges against parents.
“There’s not many eight-year-olds that don’t want to go to school,” Myers said. “We know that if children don’t go to school on a regular basis there’s often some underlying potential for abuse or neglect. Our goal is to give families resources, a lot of different services and opportunities to offset any obstacles involved in getting their kids to school. If a parent refuses to meet with us, we start to identify them as a parent that may be neglecting their child’s education.”
The program has been in effect since the 2001-02 school year, and school administrators say collaborating with resource officers has helped parents get their children to school more consistently.
Officer Rebecca Morrison has helped Creekside Elementary School address chronic absenteeism, Principal Mark Heiden said.
“We work together on different situations,” Heiden said. “We send her information on students that need her to reach out, and she’ll reach out to us if there’s a barrier we can work with. The parent might say they can’t bring their child to school because of this issue, and we’ll reach out to try and help with that.”
The program relies on state, federal and local funding, but grants have gotten more competitive and harder to secure, resulting in less money flowing in from the Department of Child Services. As a result, the program has asked each school to contribute $1,000 per school year. Overall, the program costs more than $100,000 to run each year in Johnson County, with school contributions covering about $25,000 of that cost.
Once students get back to class, intervention staff at the school can get them caught up on the curriculum, Isom Elementary Principal Sondra Wooton said.
“We want children here every day,” Wooton said. “When they’re here consistently getting information and start performing well in school they get more out of the school experience. We always have intervention programs at school provided by the support staff and teachers to get them caught up. I think we’ve had good success. We have good success in not having repeat offenders.”
The authority of having a government agency involved also lets parents know the seriousness of chronic absenteeism, East Side Elementary Principal Andrew Scholl said.
“(It) lets parents know it’s serious,” Scholl said. “As much as we incentivize attendance and have policies in place sometimes it takes the extra level of notification from a government entity they see as more authoritative. It tends to work pretty well.”
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Here’s a look at the number of students referred to the Family Resource program from each school district in 2017-18
District;number of students referred
Clark Pleasant;190
Edinburgh;41
Indian Creek;37
Franklin;261
Greenwood;181
Center Grove;145
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