YCS to review district-wide attendance policies in an effort to get students to school

As student absences continues to be an issue on the local, state and national levels, Yelm Community Schools (YCS) is committing to working towards improving attendance district-wide and will review policy to “make it harder” for students to miss class.

During a YCS board of directors meeting on Thursday, April 16, Chris Woods, superintendent, said attendance is one of the most important pieces to the district’s strategic plan.

“We cannot make a positive impact on our students if they are not here,” Woods said. “Dr. Lisa Cadero-Smith, tonight, is going to give an update on the work that we’ve done so far, and what’s to come.”

Cadero-Smith, assistant superintendent, claimed that attendance is a strong, district-wide focus for YCS, currently.

“When the strategic planning committee met last spring, the very first thing we did was look at data. All kinds of data. Academic data. Student behavior data. Data related to social-emotional learning,” she said. “One of the things that stood out, immediately, was that we have an issue of attendance in our district. We are not unique in that. I want to make sure that you’re painting an accurate picture. This is a statewide issue, and this is a national issue.”

Cadero-Smith added that student absences are a significant issue for YCS and within the western Washington region. She believes that the first thing the district has to focus on with learning is “having students at school.”

“They have to be here in order for us to teach them,” Cadero-Smith said. “That happens through a partnership with our families. One of the things that we’ll be doing in the coming year, you’re going to be hearing a lot from us about partnering around attendance. This has to be a shared effort in order for us to overcome this and increase student attendance so that we can increase student learning.”

During the 2024-25 school year, Cadero-Smith stated that over 41% of the students within YCS experienced “chronic absenteeism” — or missed over 10% of the school year due to absences.

“That absolutely has an impact on their learning,” she said. “Our goal is very, very concrete. We’re starting out at this 40% and our plan is to lower our chronic absenteeism rate by 20% every year over a five-year period. We’re going to be measuring that and reporting on that to the strategic planning committee, as well as the board and the website for our community.”

Additionally, Cadero-Smith and the strategic planning committee don’t want to experiment during this phase of improving attendance, but rather make sure they’re implementing strategies that are known to work. She claims the committee has looked into various foundations that focus on attendance and best attendance practices.

“In many cases, they’re practices that our schools already have well in place,” she said. “In other cases, we got some new ideas. Those are things like careful attendance tracking. Having a data team that’s looking closely at attendance. Outreach to families. Re-engagement of students after an extended absence. Those are just examples.”

In an effort to better reflect healthy district-wide attendance habits, Cadero-Smith said YCS joined a statewide community of practice. She noted that the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) is also part of a larger national movement to increase school attendance.

“What this means is we, as a district, have joined a whole statewide group that’s looking at attendance,” Cadero-Smith said. “What that does is avails to us a group of professionals across the state who are working on the same types of issues that we are and so we can learn from one another. This isn’t just the blind leading the blind. We’re really guided by a set of best practices we’re focused on.”

She noted the statewide community of practice is part of a multi-part model. The first part of the model is a clear, district-wide focus on attendance.

The second part of the model, Cadero-Smith said, is a focus on “warm communication.”

The third part to the model is the notion of “first faces,” or the adults who see students first during the morning. These “first faces” include bus drivers, food service personnel, teachers, para professionals and front office staff.

The final piece of the multi-part model, Cadero-Smith said, is having a carefully constructed student roster and tracking the chronic absences to engage in strategies that support students.

Cadero-Smith said the school board will review policy during the next study session meeting on Thursday, April 23.

“We’re going to beef up our attendance policy, both, so that it supports our teachers and our students, and provides fair communication to families about our expectations and our needs around student attendance,” she claimed.

Woods added, the bottom line is that YCS needs to do a better job at “making it harder for students and families to miss school.”