Attendance Initiative 2015-2016

Neil Armstrong Elementary School
Mini-Grant Application
1. Organizational Information
a. School Name: Neil Armstrong Elementary School
b. Address: 3311 Central Avenue
c. City, State, Zip Code: Bettendorf, Iowa, 52722
d. Phone Number: 563-359-8275
e. District or Organization Name: Bettendorf Community School District
f. FEIN Number:
g. Principals name and title: Dr. Lisa Stevenson
h. Principals email address: [email protected]
i. Main Contact name and title: Danielle Breier, School Counselor
j. Main Contact email address: [email protected]
2. How are you defining the cohort of students you wish to address using United Way
funds? How will you identify students to place in this cohort? How many students do you
estimate the final cohort will contain?
The cohort of students that will be addressed using the United Way funds will be those
students with high risk of poor attendance. At the beginning of the year we will use our
infinite campus system to identify the students from the previous year with poor attendance.
Students will qualify if they missed 10 or more days of school, or have a high number of
tardies (need specific number). To address our students that move into our school over the
summer, we will use attendance information sent from their previous school. This year, we
have (use specific number) who will qualify to be identified in our cohort. We will add
students throughout the year if needed.
3. Briefly describe your initiative. What strategies will you use to address the attendance
issues of these students? What evidence do you have to support the effectiveness of your
approach.
According to the article Present, Engaged, and Accounted for: The Critical Importance
of addressing chronic absence in early grades (2008), in order to implement and plan effective
interventions that will address chronic absences, a school district must examine data on chronic

absences and contact students and families when they are absent in order to gain more
information about the problem. Our initiative will fund a 2 hour a day position where this person has
personal and frequent contact with those families that are absent. This funded position will also look at
attendance data in order to make informed decisions concerning interventions and strategies to help
address the problem. Families will be contacted twice throughout the day. Office staff will contact the
missing student in the morning per school policy and the initiative funded employee will also reach out to
the family in the afternoon. By having consistent information shared with school personnel and with the
families, the hope is that our attendance numbers will improve. The funded position will also work
closely with the counselor and the classroom teacher to set up and run interventions and strategies
necessary to help improve student success and attendance. Our school had an attendance initiative in
place for the 2014-2015 school year. While we saw some student success and lowered attendance
numbers, we feel the missing link was a position dedicated solely to parent contact and attendance
tracking. This initiative would include this position in hopes to further boost our attendance numbers.
4. How will you spend United Way funds? What other funds will your strategy require, and where
will you raise those funds? (Your answer should match the strategy budget you submit with your
application).
United Way funds will be used to fund a 2 hour a day position that will be used solely for
attendance tracking and attendance interventions. Other funds required would be for rewards or supports
needed in order to address chronic low attendance. This attendance initiative will be connected to our
PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention System) team and program already in place. PBIS is a multi-tiered
approach to addressing behavior concerns within the school setting. PBIS operates under the core
principles that appropriate behavior can be taught to all children, early intervention is the key to
successful behavior management, student progress and data are vital in making decisions regarding

intervention, and assessments must be used to help drive intervention. The PBIS core principals align
perfectly to our vision for what the United Way funded attendance monitor will do throughout the 20152016 school year. If extra funds are required, this will come from our PBIS budget.
5. Each school whose attendance initiative is funded under this opportunity is required to report, at
the end of the year, on the following outcome measurement: A minimum of half of the students in
your cohort (all of whom missed 18 days or more in the 2014-2015 school year) will not miss 18
days or more in the 2015-2016 school year. Please explain what tools you will use to measure this
outcome. If you are going to track additional outcomes, please list them here as well, including
the tools you will use to make these measurements.
Bettendorf Community school district uses the program Infinite Campus to track attendance data.
Through the program, the United Way funded attendance monitor will be able to keep track of days
absent, reasons for the absences, and tardies. We will also set up a GoogleDoc form that will keep all
school personnel updated on interventions that have been tried with the cohort of students, as well as
parent contact and strategies used.

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Neil Armstrong Elementary School

Neil Armstrong Elementary School

Neil Armstrong Elementary School

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