All staff promote regular attendance, manage attendance issues & support the attendance of homeless children. Master Teachers & Family Eligibility Specialist work directly with families to identify barriers & develop strategies to improve attendance. Steps are taken to prohibit or severely limit the use of temporary suspension or eventual expulsion due to a child’s behavior.
Regulations & Policy
HS Performance Standard 1302.16, 1302.17
Programs must promote regular attendance, manage attendance issues & support the attendance of homeless children. Attendance must be recorded daily on a group sign-in/out sheet.
Tools:
Video Description: Video talks about Head Start Program Attendance
Attendance & Absence Instructions
Teachers share information with families at the beginning of the program year & throughout the year regarding the benefits of regular attendance, the absence policy & sign-in/out procedure.
When a parent calls in an unplanned absence, staff must record the generic absence type, such as "sick" & sign using their full legal signature.
When an authorized adult picks-up a child for the first time their identity will be verified through inspection of their valid government ID & staff must ask him/her to sign in their full legal signature next to their name on the emergency card in addition to the sign-in/out sheet.
Child No-Show/No-Call
To ensure children are safe when they do not arrive at school, any time a child is unexpectedly absent without notification from the parent/guardian, a designated staff member must attempt to contact the family by phone within one hour of the child's expected start time.
Strategies to Promote Attendance
Master Teacher or designee will analyze attendance data to identify patterns of absences that may put the child at risk of missing 10% of program days per year. Master Teacher & Family Eligibility Specialist works directly with families to identify barriers & develop strategies to improve attendance as outlined in the Improvement Process. Anytime a classroom's monthly attendance falls below 90%, a Classroom Level Attendance Action Plan must be submitted to the Director.
Note: When a child ceases to attend & efforts have been made with the family to resume attendance, & the child's attendance does not resume, the slot is considered vacant.
Tools:
Video Description: Video talks about Strategies to Promote Attendance
Community Resources
Staff must support the attendance of families experiencing homelessness by utilizing community resources for transportation to & from the program.
Parents who are MJC students have free access to the bus so they should take advantage of that resource first.
See Celeste Admin for bus passes.
Tools:
Suspension & Expulsion
This procedure assures steps are taken to prohibit or severely limit the use of temporary suspension or eventual expulsion due to a child’s behavior. The procedure includes processes to follow when a child exhibits persistent & serious challenging behaviors. Possible strategies are explored & all steps taken to address such problems, and to facilitate the child’s safe participation in the program must be well documented.
Tools:
Recording Attendance
Attendance is recorded in both COPA based upon the daily sign-in/out sheets.
Teaching staff verify that all signatures & absences are accurately completed on the daily sign in/out sheets
Teaching staff enter attendance into COPA daily based upon the daily sign in/out sheets.
Tools:
Attendance Tracking Binder
Attendance reports & plans are maintained within a binder located at each site
The process, parent flyers, tools used, reports & plans are included in the Attendance Tracking Binder
Tools:
Monitoring
A Grantee monitoring review will be held every program year. In addition, self-monitoring must be documented and occur as follows:
ERSEA: Within first 45 days
FPA Assessment & Goals: Within 90 days
Case Conferencing: Quarterly
Tools:
Knowledge Check
Are you ready to check for understanding? No worries, if you do not do well the first time, you can take the Knowledge Check a second time.
Good luck my friend!
