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Promotions add up to draw students to Count Week
The Vindicator (Youngstown)
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Struthers Elementary School Principal Maggie Kowach hugs first-grade Student Lauryn Mileto. The principal has formulated a list of strategies to encourage students to attend school regularly during Count Week - The period of time when students in a district are counted to determine funding for the district.
By Chelsea Miller
TheNewsOutlet.org
An autographed football from the New York Giants’ Mario Manningham might have a lot of value in this football-crazed region.
That prize – along with pizza parties, bicycles and even gift cards – have all been used to lure millions of dollars to area schools.
Warren school officials used the football in 2009 to lure students to school during Count Week, the annual one-week period when the state audits school attendance. Other schools offered bicycles, gift cards, pizza parties and dress-down days.
A lot is riding on how many students attend during that week.
Though property taxes generate most of a district’s income, it is additional state funding that helps complete all districts’ budgets — a practice that at least one education expert blasts as flawed and inaccurate.
The state education department uses counts from one week in October as the major factor in determining how much funding districts receive from the state. State Department of Education officials said they could not specify exactly how much of a district’s funding is determined by Count Week. But Christina Siracusa, who works with funding at the department, said Count Week makes up the majority of the state portion.
“Attendance during Count Week is the only number we have for funding students,” she said.
“If a student is there Monday through Friday for the whole day, they count as one student,” she said. “If they’re there for half the week, but they have an excused absence for the second half, they’re still one student. If they have an unexcused absence… they count for the portion of time they were there, or with an excused absence.”
State aid varies among districts with lower-wealth school districts receiving more aid from the state, and higher-wealth districts getting less. Experts say local revenues provide about 46 percent of tax dollars to schools; state aid makes up another 46 percent and federal aid contributes about 8 percent. School officials declined to comment on the state funding formula.
Randy Hoover, professor of teacher education at Youngstown State University, said the Ohio system is an inaccurate way to count attendance, but he agrees with schools using special tactics to encourage attendance.
“You want as much funding as you can get, and Ohio’s formula is so screwed up … I don’t blame schools for trying to make sure no kids are absent that day.”
For 2010’s Count Week, Oct. 4-8, Youngstown City Schools called homes and offered various incentives to students to attend.
The city’s schools, which were placed under academic emergency, had a 2008-09 attendance rate of 92.4 percent, just under the state minimum of 93 percent.
Kate Good, who works in the attendance department of Youngstown City Schools, said the district is eager to employ any strategy to get students in school, especially during Count Week.
“A lot of the time, they have some kind of incentive for students that attend every day that week, and then they have a process if you’ve missed to call the homes and make sure they get written excuses to have on file.”
Poland High School Principal Vito Weeda, whose district earned a mark of distinction for its 96 percent attendance rate, said his school does not offer incentives during Count Week, but he does encourage attendance during the week.
“We tell the students this is how we receive money to educate them and the only excuses we can accept are doctors’ excuses. Now, if there are emergencies, the superintendent can override that, but we just encourage kids to be there,” Weeda said.
Margaret Kowach, who began working as principal of Struthers Elementary School in August, is well aware of Count Week strategies and has practiced several when she worked in McDonald schools.
“We have newsletters that we send out to the parents. We have a ... one-call now system … that just lets the parents know,” Kowach said. “And something also that I was thinking about doing … is there might even be a rewards system that week. Everyone who’s here all five days this week… there might be 10 minutes of extra recess on Friday.”
Aaron Schwab, communications coordinator for Warren City Schools, said that district schools offer a variety of incentives. The Mario Manningham football was one that stood out for him.
Unlike in Ohio, the Pennsylvania Department of Education bases its financial assistance on the attendance of districts throughout the year, said Dan Iser, spokesperson for the PDE.
Although the ODE has had several ways of configuring attendance in the past, such as using the three-year average of Count Weeks in October and counting students in October and February, the ODE went back to counting attendance the first week in October in fiscal year 10.
Siracusa disputes that the system is inaccurate.
“Inaccurate is not the right word, because the students … have to be residents of the district or under certain types of agreements. There are exceptions to that, but if they’re a resident of the district, that’s where they’re supposed to be going to school,” she said.
“The fact that we only count during that one week, I don’t think that makes it inaccurate.”
The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.