On Saturday, Feb. 4, volunteers across Spring ISD will take part in the district’s spring semester Attendance Matters event. The special event is part of Spring ISD’s EVERYday Counts, Attendance Matters campaign aimed at encouraging daily attendance and ensuring that students are on-track to learn and succeed, and will include outreach to students who may be struggling with attendance for a variety of reasons.

Research shows that attendance plays an important role as early as kindergarten, with studies showing that children who miss too many days in kindergarten and first grade have more trouble learning to read than their peers. Students with an excessive number of absences by sixth grade are at an elevated risk of dropping out, and by freshman year of high school, good attendance can predict graduation rates even better than eighth-grade test scores.

“Good attendance is a skill for life,” said Spring ISD Superintendent Dr. Lupita Hinojosa. “It helps ensure that students are successful in their learning and achieve the goal of graduating, but it’s also part of the foundation for life after school. Showing up is important in everything we do – in our careers, our relationships, and in our communities – and it all starts with showing up each and every day at school, ready to learn and grow.”

The morning event will begin at 8 a.m. with a high-energy kickoff at Booker Elementary School featuring senior administrators, school board members, cheerleaders and other student representatives, and a virtual roll-call as staff stationed at campuses across the district begin their own outreach efforts to connect with students and families to encourage regular attendance and bring back students who, for whatever reason, have stopped attending school.

After the kickoff event, volunteers will be fanning out across the district to visit with parents and students in homes and apartment complexes throughout Spring ISD’s zoned neighborhoods, while other volunteers will reach out from phone banks at Booker and other district campuses.

In addition to sharing with families about the vital importance of regular daily attendance as a prerequisite for academic success, another focus of the event will be on the many options students and families have and the ways the district works with students to meet them where they are and help them overcome any obstacles they may be facing to returning to school – options like the district’s new Momentum High School, where students can catch up, get ahead, and take advantage of more flexible school-day schedules that allow them to meet work and family obligations.

“We’re constantly expanding and reevaluating the programs and support services we have in place to help every student in Spring ISD succeed,” Hinojosa said. “We know our students can soar when they come to school every day, and that’s why events like this are so important – to share that message with our community.”