Go Big Red: DCHS Weekly Message

Week 20: A Knock at the Door

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Decatur County Community High School

605 E Commercial St, Oberlin, KS 67749

January 8, 2023 (Schedule at the bottom, Skip What You Want)

Follow us on Twitter at @DCHSREDDEVILS or

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Decatur community,

It's rare that you wake up to the sound of a knock at the door before 7:00 AM on any day. Rare enough that when it happened at my house last Tuesday it was already one more time here in Oberlin than it had happened in the past 21 years in Louisburg. Admittedly, the first thoughts were of emergency and catastrophe, as it was snowing more than it had all winter. Luckily, it wasn't a bad thing at all, and two of my young entrepreneur-students were getting the jump on shoveling driveways, and, in the process, getting the rare intro-paragraph shoutout.

Shoutout to freshmen Theo Butterfield and Arlan Coats. They did a great job, and I appreciated the ambition. I only hope everyone else was appreciative of the early morning visits. Great work, gentlemen.

SHOUTOUTS

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Shoutout to sophomore students Weston Barnes, Sophia Davis, and Michaela Wasson. Before the break, Sophia and Michaela approached about the idea of repainting the bathrooms to make them more lively. Over the break they recruited Weston and were able to get some finished. I appreciated the whole process of students recognizing a simple way they could make a difference. They communicated with STUCO, the head custodian, and even reached out and made the paint order before finally doing the work themselves.

Shoutout to Mrs. Witt for taking on the role of Forensics/Drama/Spring play sponsor and for hosting the Drama/Speech lock-in this past Friday. I know she is excited, and the students are going to be performing the play Clue. I think that it should be quite an entertaining show and look forward to seeing how it all comes together.

Shoutout to Mr. Ketterl's FFA students for helping serve and clean up for this past weekend's County Appreciation Dinner at the Gateway. Mr. Ketterl's FFA is quite the crew, with more students signed up for FFA than any other activity/sport that we have. Glad that some of them could help out.

Shoutout to Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Tally's DCHS Singers for performing at the Gateway at this past weekend's County Appreciation Dinner. The singers have done quite a bit in the community. Prior to the break, I commended their caroling throughout town, and during Finals' week, they performed for the Rotary Club during lunch. I love the civic engagement.

Shoutout to our new computer/Interventionist teacher Mr. Matt Nylund. Mr. Nylund has subbed in the district for the past few years, and has taken over the computer/Intervention role this semester. Mr. Nylund has tremendous life experiences that have had him teaching as far away as Australia. I have always enjoyed his presence in the building and his constant positive attitude. When the opening occurred, I jumped at the chance to add him to our staff.

Shoutout to a great staff. Last Tuesday (that same snowy morning) we were able to share lunch together and have a Staff White Elephant gift exchange. I appreciated the participation, a great way to get our second semester off in the right direction. I was mystified by how some people kept ending up with gifts perfect for them. Mrs. Springer ended up with a unique Art piece. Mr. Breth ended up with tools. I ended up with a few decks of cards, less than a month after I had told my wife I needed some. Our "Back from Break" White Elephant will probably be our new tradition.

Things You Should Know

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KESA Topic: Attendance Rate vs. Chronic Absenteeism

Every district receives an annual document that is known as the District Accountability Report. These reports include valuable information that compares districts to each other and allows for us to recognize areas of strength and weakness. Unfortunately, these reports generally share information from two years prior for the majority of the school year. The most recent report is the 2020-2021 school year, though the the 2021-2022 report will be coming out soon. It will still be a few more years before we will see information that is related to our current year. Having said that, everything we are doing and will do will affect that report and all of those beyond.

Here are the major areas that are covered on an Accountability Report:

1. Attendance Rate

2. Chronic Absenteeism

3. Graduation Rate

4. Dropout Rate

5. School Academic Success (State Assessments)

6. Post-Secondary Success Rate

7. Post-Secondary Effectiveness Rate

8. ACT Scores

Other Data

9. Social Emotional Growth

10. Individual Plan of Study.

There are several things here, and many of them are related. With the new semester and recent discussion of Attendance, I am going to focus on Attendance Rate and Chronic Absenteeism this week.

Attendance Rate: The Attendance Rate is very simply the average percentage of students that are in attendance each day, regardless of excused or unexcused. The only classroom absences that do not count are school related activities. For example, if a student went on an FFA field trip, they would be registered as School Activity, not absent. How does DCHS compare to other high schools in the state?

DCHS: 93.9%

State: 93.8%

You cans see that the daily Attendance Rate at DCHS is almost identical to the State average.

Chronic Absenteeism: Chronic Absenteeism is the newer of the two. The state began to look beyond the simpler Attendance Rate a few years ago, primarily because there are some students that miss a ton of school. A student is considered chronically absent when they have missed 10% or more of the school days in a school year (way too many). In this situation, it doesn't matter if there is a doctor's note or not. You can be excused but still chronically absent. You can be well within the school's attendance policy by providing doctor's notes but still be chronically absent. At the end of the year, each student either does or doesn't count against the school in this area. Considering that a student has to miss 18 days of school during a year to be chronically absent, it seems like there would be very few.

So how did DCHS compare?

DCHS: 18.3%

State: 17.5%

As you can see, DCHS has a higher rate than the State in this area. There are always going to be situations that arise that cause someone to miss 18 school days or more, but that is a hard number to swallow, and it will be a big goal of ours in the future to brainstorm ways to improve the attendance rate and reward those students that show up on a regular basis.

I will leave the attendance policy in the message one more week.

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Attendance Policy.

During the first semester, I began to talk about KESA. I will leave the KESA article in the next section for you to reflect. This week I want to focus on attendance, because attendance is a big part of a school's rating, and every student that misses too much school counts against us.

The student pictured is a former Louisburg High School student that graduated 10 years ago. His name is Dylan York. I taught Dylan both English and History back in middle school. This picture was taken when a news crew from FOX4 News in KC came to Louisburg to do a story on Dylan. Why? Dylan did not miss one day of school for his entire career, K-12, much less 6 days in a semester without a doctor's note.

Below is a an email that you will receive if your student's attendance becomes a concern. For some, it is simply a notification, and you are very aware, but these will be sent out starting the last week in January to bi-weekly from that point to all parents of students that are on pace to miss too many days, affecting the district's "Chronic Absenteeism" on the KESA report. Next week, I will continue with an explanation of "Chronic Absenteeism."

Hello,

You are receiving this email due to the fact that your student has missed several days of school and has exceeded or is on pace to exceed their maximum allowable parent-excused absences this semester. If you have doctor’s notes that you can provide for prior absences, please have them sent over to the high school so that we can update your records.

Here is the current policy:

Doctor’s Excused Absences: These absences do not count against your attendance total. The school reserves the right to verify these absences if there become too many. These absences are strictly related to illness and or injury. For the most part, these do not factor into the equation.
Excused Absences: These are absences that a parent can call in. You may not need to see a doctor every time you don’t feel well. These can be used at any time. Students are allowed 6 absences per semester without a doctor’s note. When they hit the 7th call in, it is unexcused without a doctor’s note.
Unexcused absences: Absences that are unaccounted for or are over the 6 excused days and no doctor’s note is provided.

School policy states that unexcused absences result in the following:

1. Loss of SDL free time for the remainder of the semester

2. Potential ISS for repeated offenses

3. Truancy letter turned into the Decatur County Attorney if meeting the criteria below:

State Law says that truancy kicks in when there are one of the following:

3 unexcused absences in a row
5 unexcused absences in a semester
7 unexcused absences in a school year

Your student's current attendance: ______

Excused Absences without a doctor’s note: _______ (6 max per semester)

Unexcused Absences: _____

If you have any questions or further information, please feel free to reach out to us at 785-475-2231.

Sincerely,

Jeremy Holloway

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Early Release Wednesday

This year, there will be Early Release Days from school on the first Wednesday of the month. Teachers will meet together in teams, and it will give them some much needed time to meet together in groups, work on data, and plan for the following month.

This Wednesday, January, 11th students will be released from DCHS at 2:00.

GO BIG RED

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It's a busy week this week. The JH girls' and the high school basketball teams are all in action 3 times, JH wrestling kicks off, and the high school wrestlers host both a dual on Thursday night and the annual Buzz Matson Invitational on Saturday.

Busy, but exciting. The building won't rest this week. Come on out and join the fun.

You don't even have to knock.

Until next Week,

Jeremy Holloway

Go Big Red!