Parkside Middle School Principal Scott Schuchsta and assistant principals told the Committee on Student Conduct on March 19 that the school is pursuing a targeted attendance plan to raise the share of students attending at least 90% of school days.

Parkside set a goal to increase the percentage of students attending 90% of the time by 3 percentage points — from 69.3% to 71.3% — and to raise average daily membership (ADM) from about 90% to 93.6% this year, Schuchsta said.

"Attending school is such an important thing for their future success," Schuchsta said, noting the team frames the work as building habits that support long-term outcomes. The school's approaches combine incentives, family outreach, and targeted interventions.

Nut graf: Parkside staff described a multipronged effort — including team attendance competitions, a 100-day perfect-attendance celebration, home visits, weekly truancy team reviews, monthly truancy meetings with juvenile-probation-affiliated staff and a district attendance coordinator, multilingual liaisons and subgroup data disaggregation — to address chronic absenteeism and connect students to supports.

Parkside highlighted several specific strategies. Staff run grade-level team attendance competitions with modest rewards and hold a 100-day perfect-attendance celebration. The school’s social worker, counselors and assistant principals meet weekly to review truancy data, develop interventions and, where needed, plan home visits.

Schuchsta said staff try to avoid a strictly punitive approach. The school partners with multilingual liaisons to reach families in their preferred languages, disaggregates data to identify disparities between subgroups, and runs monthly truancy meetings that include a JPPO (juvenile probation/parole office) representative and the district attendance coordinator to coordinate supports.

Staff reported current counts and near-term tracking: 537 students currently meet the 90% attendance goal, while another 145 students fall just below that threshold, Schuchsta said. The school has a targeted outreach plan for students with 10–15 absences to prevent them from reaching 17–18 days that would push them below 90% for the year.

Administrators and committee members discussed causes and interventions. Parkside staff cited lingering effects of the COVID-19 era, anxiety and mental-health barriers, transiency and housing instability as reasons some students miss school. Schuchsta said the social worker and counselors often provide individualized outreach; the school also operates a food pantry in partnership with an elementary school social worker to meet family needs.

Committee members asked about extracurriculars and programming to boost engagement. Parkside staff listed after-school options including a 21st Century program that runs daily, seasonal sports (track, softball, baseball, basketball, cross country, volleyball, soccer, flag football) and clubs such as robotics and Destination Imagination. Staff reported athletes frequently show improved attendance during sports seasons because participation requires presence at school.

On data and communication, Schuchsta said families receive monthly attendance updates and that the school communicates at checkpoints (for example after the 100th day) with individualized emails explaining a student’s percentage and available resources. The school is awaiting a district MTSSB dashboard to provide finer-grained referral and attendance breakdowns.

Ending: Parkside leaders told the committee they will continue incentives and targeted outreach through spring, expand nontraditional extracurricular options to engage more students and ask the district for staffing and resource support where needed, including additional social-work capacity.