Sioux Falls School District encourages community to ‘Show Up’ for its students

The Sioux Falls School District, and its partners at Click Rain and Lemonly, have come up with a new campaign to increase attendance at schools across the city: “Show Up.”

It’s a simple message district officials say they hope will show results across all its schools this year, and inspire community members to take part in solutions to help children show up to school.

“You might see a student who is not in school, but you know that it’s during the school day. What can we as a community do in order to show up for those kids? Might we roll down our window and say, ‘Hey, can I help you show up today?’” district community relations coordinator DeeAnn Konrad said.

The campaign is part of the $1.5 million three-year grant from the South Dakota Department of Education to address chronic absenteeism in the district. In one year of the grant, the district reported earlier this month that it’s seen an almost 2% increase in “good” attenders − 121 students who are absent less than 5% of days enrolled − and a 2.26% reduction in chronic absenteeism from last year.

More: Sioux Falls schools have a problem with chronic absenteeism. There's no perfect solution

The SDDOE counts attendance three different ways: regular attendance, “full academic year” (FAY) attendance, and chronic absenteeism.

In the 2021-2022 school year , for example, regular attendance was at 76%; FAY, which is based on the percentage of students attending school for 90% or more of enrolled days during the full academic year, was at 86% for the Sioux Falls School District. And chronic absenteeism, which measures the percentage of students who have attended 10 or more days of school, but who have also missed more than 10% of the other days in the school year, was at 24% for the district.

Cause is close to interns’ hearts

Click Rain partner James Krueger said Konrad reached out to him to work on a marketing campaign earlier this spring as part of the grant.

Then, throughout the summer, two interns with Click Rain (Joey Gellerman, from the University of South Dakota, and Matt Scott, from South Dakota State University) and two interns from Lemonly (Deirdre Nuebel, from the University of Cincinnati, and Alex Munce, from Southeast Technical College) met with the district to discuss and work on the campaign together.

Both companies donated their time to the district to work on the campaign. The only cost going forward will be $10,000 from each year of the grant to advertise, print and market the campaign’s “Show Up” message, Konrad said.

More: How the Sioux Falls School District is using a $1.5M grant to address chronic absenteeism

Gellerman, who is from Sioux Falls, said it was “close to his heart” to solve this problem and to be part of the solution.

The “Show Up” message is for students, parents, the district’s six attendance liaisons (who were hired as part of the grant and work at Garfield, Hawthorne, Hayward and Terry Redlin elementary schools and George McGovern and Whittier middle schools) staff and the community, Assistant Superintendent Jamie Nold said.

“Community wide, the ‘Show Up’ campaign truly can hit every part and just tailor it to that group,” Nold said. “It has to be a whole community effort to be able to have this be a successful campaign.”

How attendance liaisons have empowered students to ‘Show Up’ to school

Terry Redlin Elementary School attendance liaison Rochelle Holloway and Whittier Middle School attendance liaison Suzannah Chap work together closely to make sure students in their neighborhoods can make it to their schools.

“Our job is to be helpful and to build a relationship with them to understand what the family’s needs are to get to school,” Holloway said. “Every day is a new day to get them to school.”

They both said transportation and parents’ work schedules can be barriers to students making it to school each day.

Some parents might get home from work at 6 a.m. and then accidentally fall back to sleep before getting their children to school. Students might have a hard time adjusting to back-to-school schedules after the summer; or, they might have a hard time crossing Cliff Avenue, Holloway and Chap explained.

“Nobody is working against the families in Sioux Falls schools. All that we want is for the children in this community to go to school,” Chap said. “When you break down these barriers and can have these face-to-face conversations, it makes a huge impact, and it’s really wonderful to see that happen.”

George McGovern Middle School attendance liaison Kristal Shoffeitt said she’s seen poverty, and new populations who might not know how American school works, as barriers to some of her students “showing up.”

Solutions these liaisons have implemented include Holloway and Chap providing working alarm clocks to families, Shoffeitt purchasing students the school supplies they needed to not feel embarrassed to show up without them, communicating with families in a variety of ways and empowering them.

“Really being that kind voice that parents feel like I’m on their side, and not somebody that’s just going to tell them, ‘Hey, You did this wrong,’” Shoffeitt said. "(It’s) helping empower parents to empower their kids.”

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Sioux Falls School District encourages community to ‘Show Up’ for its students