Summary
The first academic quarter of this incredibly unique and unusual school year is now drawing to a close, and educators and their partners have learned so much! As a company that quickly adapted to this dynamic new learning and working environment, RaaWee K12 Solutions has been on the cutting edge of designing real-time responses to educators’ and families’ needs. Our innovation team immediately jumped into action by soliciting practitioner input about what they were experiencing in the “real world” of distance, hybrid, and in-person learning in schools and districts all over the state.
It was abundantly clear: people needed help!
Site administrators, registrars, attendance clerks, school secretaries, district office student support services, teachers, and parents/guardians alike all desired an advanced and comprehensive system to monitor student attendance and well-being. As a result, RaaWee got right to work on updating our tools, online platform, and communications to reflect the evolving nature of tracking and supporting strong student attendance throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Since August alone, we streamlined and calibrated our attendance reporting definitions, created a set of 20 motivational flyers on relevant attendance topics, and devised a crosswalk between our services and California Senate Bill 98 to help districts report accurately to the State Department of Education.
SB98 outlines three tiers of support for positive attendance—each in which RaaWee can assist our partner districts:
– Tier 1: Creating an open, welcoming environment that engages students and parents
– Tier 2: Early interventions for students exhibiting attendance problems Tier
– Tier 3: Interventions for chronic truants involved in the School Attendance Review Board (SARB) process
Everyone has a role to play in the educational landscape. What’s ours? Making life easier for caregivers by simplifying documentation tasks and follow-up responsibilities so that educators’ and parents’ time and energy can be focused on doing their jobs: teaching and raising their children, respectively. RaaWee’s robust and multi-faceted digital space includes prevention, intervention, and postvention strategies and tools that cover a wide variety of indicators and root causes that impede attendance and increase absenteeism. We help you help your most struggling learners.
Let’s face it. Even the most motivated of students will falter from time to time during this shift to distance learning; so those that were already having challenges in the traditional setting may need even more support. We are doing our part to keep ALL children actively engaged in learning no matter their circumstances. We are a company that listens. A company that cares. And most importantly, a company that seeks to remove barriers for all young people to reach their potential. Most of life’s successes begin, in large part, just by showing up. And that’s our passion and mission now and for whatever the future may hold. Our society will be better for it.
About the Author
Dr. Kim Wallace is a professional educational consultant with Process Makes Perfect. She started her career in public education 27 years ago as a high school instructor before going into site and district administration. She most recently served as the superintendent of a large San Francisco Bay Area district. Kim consults, writes, and presents on the topics of leadership, curriculum and instruction, policy and protocol, and future trends in education.
