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The assembly at Wheeling Park High School on Wednesday wasn't just a celebration of the "Keep the Ball Rolling" initiative, which gives every public school in West Virginia $1,500 to provide students with essential items like food, clothing, shoes, coats and hygiene products to help improve school attendance.
Now, that was a reason to celebrate. Auto dealership owner Shawn Ball, Marshall University President Brad Smith and his Wing 2 Wing Foundation, and West Virginia Treasurer Larry Pack and the Pack Family Foundation are stepping up to help students throughout the Mountain State get to school and stay in school.
But the assembly also was a showcase of the wonderful programs created within Ohio County Schools and spearheaded by the district's Community in Schools site directors.
At Elm Grove Elementary, Marleah Donahue partnered with the Wheeling Housing Authority to have students and their families meet at the Exley Center in the Hil-Dar neighborhood each morning to eat breakfast, play games and walk as a group to school. After school, the same group comes back for dinner, plus games and crafts.
She remembers one student telling her, "It's been so long since I had dinner with my mommy."
At Warwood Middle School, Heather Weekley is working with the Free Bike Depot in downtown Wheeling, which has provided 18 bikes and helmets so far to ride to school, as Warwood sits in a neighborhood where students can hop on their bikes and ride.
At Bridge Street Middle School, Unique Murphy has worked with Weekley on a similar bike program where, along with riding to school, those students also take a group ride once a month with a "guest rider." Murphy said 95 of the around 250 students in the school participate in that program.
Ohio County Schools is taking a proactive stance in improving attendance in its schools this year, implementing new methods and reinforcing established methods to cut down on chronic absenteeism, or missing more than 10% of days in a normal school year. That's cause for applause. The standing ovation goes to the district's CIS site directors and their schools for their work.
District-wide policies are a great foundation. These programs at schools like Elm Grove, Warwood and Bridge Street are awesome, outside-the-box ideas that engage students and their parents in welcoming, fun ways. They build stronger relationships between families and schools and, when those bonds strengthen, the buy-in from parents becomes easier to establish.
The key now is for the parents of Ohio County Schools students to really buy in.
As great as these programs are in the school district, they can go so much further in their goal of improving school attendance if parents not only endorse them, but help enable them. Parental cooperation in their children's learning is the bedrock of a solid education for those students. The principles of being a good student start at home, and parents need to help their children's schools however they can.
That could mean something as simple as not arguing with the teacher, the principal or the school district official if they get a call about a student's absences or discipline issues. Parents must have schools' backs when it comes to relaying the importance of being in class to their kids. An adversarial relationship or no relationship at all helps no one, especially the children. And if you want your kids' test scores to improve, the first step to making that happen is making sure they're in school and learning.
(And if you're wanting your child's test scores to climb, the first step to making that happen is your child being in school.)
Kudos to Ohio County Schools and its CIS site managers for devising creative ways to boost attendance in our county's public schools. They need all the support we can give them to make these ways succeed.