EVERY SCHOOL DAY COUNTS! 
Year three of our county-wide
Attendance Awareness Campaign 
kicks off!
September is Attendance Awareness Month!
Get Your School Involved... 

During this National Attendance Awareness Month, we encourage every Principal to: 
  • Hang the Every School Day Counts attendance banner in a prominent place at your school
  • Display Attendance Posters with your district logo throughout your school
  • Include key messages regarding the link between attendance and achievement in your parent communication and during Back to School Night
  • Establish and promote incentives for students who demonstrate improved attendance
  • Create a memo or presentation for teachers and other school staff regarding the impact of chronic absenteeism on achievement 
Be sure to access your districts customized Principal Toolkit to find key messages, letters, posters, etc. to promote Attendance Awareness with your students, parents, and teachers.  

In the October eBlast we will send out the new 2016 Principal Checklist which you will be able to respond to electronically.  We want to hear from you about the strategies that you implemented at the start of the year  and your plans to promote attendance throughout the year. 

Principal Honor Roll
We want to recognize those superstar Principals who are actively engaging teachers and parents to improve attendance and decrease the number of students who are chronically absent by implementing other  powerful new site-based strategies,
such as:
  • Create and utilize a school-based attendance team to work with chronically absent students
And we look forward to hearing about other creative and effective strategies used to improve attendance.
Themes for September: 
Elementary School- What I love about school...
Key Message:  
A love or learning starts early, build the habit of good attendance early - school success goes hand-in-hand with good attendance.
 
Middle and High School:
"School is your first and most important job!" 
Key Message: 
Students who attend school regularly are more likely to graduate and find good jobs. In fact, a high school graduate makes, on average, a million dollars more than a dropout ever a lifetime.
 
school_supplies_desk.jpg
Communication Tools/Strategies:

Here are some ideas for establishing school-wide attendance incentives:

Start the school year off right... check out the "What Works" section of the Attendance Works website to learn strategies and to see examples of evidence based practices to improve attendance from schools and districts around the country.   http://www.attendanceworks.org/what-works/

"Get Off to a Good Start" this school year!

Last month we gave you links to great messages for parents. Beyond the talking point for parents, you should add in some messages targeted to students of all ages. As they grow older, they need to hear this message from peers, as well as teachers and parents.
 
Check out great messages to students here!

Click here are some great High School student posters:
 
Let's all get off to a good start cultivating a school-wide culture of attendance!
You can also follow the status of the county-wide campaign and share the strategies that you are using at your site and on social media
(#cocoschooleveryday)
2016 Attendance Awareness  Poster Contest
Here is an opportunity for students to use creativity to tell us why "Every School Day Counts: Attend today, achieve for a lifetime!"

Students fall behind when they miss too much school, even if it is just a day or two every few weeks. School success goes hand-in-hand with good attendance. 

Poster Theme:
"School is your first and most important job!"

Open to students in Grades 6-12 

Deadline: Friday October 28, 2016, 5:00 p.m.
Winning posters will receive $100 and artwork will appear on local transit buses around the county! 
Have your students enter today!

Superintendents Call To Action!

Superintendents can lead the district and the community in monitoring chronic absence and intervening with students headed off track. Superintendents can sign up for the  Call to Action on Attendance sponsored by Attendance Works and the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. They can:
  • Own the Issue:  Make clear that improved student attendance is one of your top priorities.
  • Mobilize the Community:  Reach out to make improved student attendance a broadly owned and widely shared civic priority
  • Drive with Data:  Use data to raise public awareness, establish targets and goals, track progress and assure accountability.

2016 Attendance Awareness Calendars
Price Reduction... 
Great for Back to School Night! Only $7 

This beautiful calendar displays the winning submissions from the "Every School Day Counts" Poster and Essay contest. The contest consisted of a poster contest for students in Grades K-5 and an essay writing contest for middle school students. There were over 256 posters and 60 essays submitted and we are proud to display the creative work of our students throughout this calendar. If you are interested in purchasing one, please visit our website for an order form here.

All proceeds from the sales of this calendar will be used to support ongoing Attendance Campaign activities.

Upcoming Webinars:
Thursday, September 8, 2016:  
Ensuring an Equal Opportunity to Learn: Leveraging Chronic Absence Data for Strategic Action, 11-12:30 pm.
In June 2016, the U.S. Office for Civil Rights released its first national count of students who were chronically absent. The data showed a staggering 6.5 million students were chronically absent, which means that they missed so much school that their ability to read well and gain fundamental skills and knowledge for college and career was hampered. In the 500 most heavily impacted districts, over 30% of students were chronically absent.

Join experts Hedy Chang, Executive Director of Attendance Works and Dr. Robert Balfanz, Director of the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University as they release a major national study analyzing the data and more importantly, showing how leaders at the local, state and national levels can take strategic action to monitor and address chronic absence in order to ensure an equal opportunity to learn and succeed.

For the Peer Learning Network webinar archives, click here.
 
Save the following date for the remainder of the webinar series:  
Tuesday, November 1.
School Climate & Student Engagement Series - 
LGBTQ Youth: What Educators Need to Know
The California Healthy Youth Act (January 1, 2016) requires school districts to provide students with integrated, comprehensive, accurate, and unbiased comprehensive sexual health education at least once in middle school and once in high school. In addition, instruction must affirmatively recognize different sexual orientations. It must also teach about gender, gender expression, and gender identity.
The CCCOE TUPE staff will be providing two upcoming professional development opportunities that will provide additional information and resources: 

This presentation will cover LGBTQ vocabulary, health disparities, schools' legal obligations, and how to be an ally. The training is appropriate for district and school administrators, as well as other school staff and school-based providers. Facilitators will be Mayela Zuniga and Teresa Gaines, from the Rainbow Community Center of Contra Costa County.

Date and location : September 7, 9 :00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.;  CCCOE, Pleasant Hill
For info: Contact Emily Justice at (925) 942-5328, visit this link to for addtional info and to register
Fee: $20
The Inclusive Schools Coalition of Central and East Contra Costa County,
a Project of Rainbow Community Center 
Presents
Welcoming Schools and Communities Summit / Rainbow High
Too many youth are being bullied, teased, and rejected based on gender and sexual orientation.  Let's come together to create change!

Open to youth age 11 and up, service providers, community members, faith leaders, policy makers, school administrators, teachers, and families/caregivers of LGBTQ youth.

With keynote speaker Andrea Fazel and special guest Honey Mahogany!
Workshops include:
  • Let's Talk About (How to Talk About) Sex
  • Fostering a Spirit of Love: Faith & Allyship
  • Taking a Closer Look: Examining Personal Bias in Providing Care to the LGBTQI Population
  • Safe Queer Sex, Healthy Boundaries, & Consent (ages 12-13 only)
  • Speed Friending, Flirting, & Pacing (ages 14-17 only)
  • What Now? How to Be an Agent of Change
  • Sex Ed for Everyone: Being LGBTQ+ Inclusive in the Classroom
  • How Do I Ally? Allyship 101
  • Care Beyond Binaries: Supporting Gender Non-Conforming Youth
  • Confronting "-isms" Inside and Out (ages 11-17 only)
  • Oops, Ouch, Educate: An Opportunity to Talk Through Microaggressions
  • So You Want to Be a Drag Star: Open Call & Rehearsal for Closing Act!
The Summit is free of charge and donations are suggested to help pay for lunch. Suggested donation is $10. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.**
When:   Saturday, September 10, 2016 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (PDT) 
Where: Olympic Continuation High School - 2730 Salvio Street, Concord, CA 94519
Contra Costa County Office of Education | 925-942-3343
Bookmark our website and check back often for valuable resources.
www.cocoschools.org/attendance

Share your successes with us and other Contra Costa County schools on Twitter
#cocoschooleveryday