UMATILLA COUNTY — School district administrators and families in Umatilla County have a new tool to boost student success.

Months of collaboration between elected, nonprofit, court and education leaders on Aug. 28 resulted in the establishment of the Sixth Judicial District Truancy Court Parent Effectiveness Program.

Intermountain Education Service District Superintendent Mark Mulvihill was more than ready for the truancy law to get teeth again.

“Getting judicial support is absolutely critical,” Mulvihill said. “We’re asking for this for the rare case when we are about to lose a kid from the (education) system … The heavy lifting will be by the judicial system,” he said. “This is another example of us working together.”

Under the direction of Circuit Judge Daniel Hill, in collaboration with the Umatilla County CARE program and Community Counseling Solutions, the new system marries school district, community and legal actions to address the harm of student truancy.

Those actions will range from coaching parents to help their child comply with school attendance requirements to monetary fines, depending on a number of variables.

Attendance matters

Oregon law since 1922 requires children to be in school.

Education experts say good attendance is linked to doing well in school. When students are often absent, it’s harder for them to stay on track.

It starts in kindergarten: regular attendance leads to reading mastery. By middle school, absenteeism joins two other factors pointing to the possibility of dropping out in high school. And in high school, attendance is the better predictor of graduation rates than eighth-grade test scores, according to the Oregon Department of Education.

State lawmakers in 2021 changed how parents can be held accountable for their children missing school for unexcused reasons. They passed a bill that removed a court’s ability to fine parents money for not getting their students to school. It also took away the option for a school superintendent to issue a citation for violation of the legal duty to send children ages 6-18 to school.

Oregon Public Broadcasting reported an effort last year to reinstate truancy fines in Oregon went to a task force on chronic absenteeism for further study.

Counties such as Union and Malheur chose not to wait out the state and created their own truancy rules. Along with other Umatilla County education leaders, Umatilla School District Superintendent Heidi Sipe reached out to Umatilla County Commissioner Cindy Timmons about a year ago for the same kind of help.

Help needed, wanted

Sipe knows her own district’s truancy problems, but as part of the executive committee at AASA — American Association of School Administrators — she also has a national view of the issue.

That committee’s work revealed regaining regular school attendance is a nationwide concern. Sipe put the problem at the center of Oregon’s version of AASA’s national “Learning 2025” mission.

Along with Sipe’s co-lead, nationally recognized education expert Sheldon Berman, members of the group meet virtually to suss out successful truancy strategies from around the U.S.

Out of AASA’s work on the topic came White House action, Sipe said.

In May, the Biden-Harris administration announced new actions to increase student attendance and engagement, calling on states, communities and schools to “cultivate a ‘culture of attendance’ and send a clear message that students need to be in school,” federal officials said, pledging support through parent messaging tools, use of existing data and efforts to report student absences in real time.

Sipe stresses the work is urgent

When in-person attendance resumed after the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, plenty of students didn’t return in the same way as before.

“Umatilla saw a near-doubling of students not regularly attending, as did many schools around the nation,” Sipe said.

While it was easy to blame the disruptions of closed school buildings, drilling down into the “why” of the matter was tougher.

Sipe said her group found several factors, the most surprising of which no one had really considered.

“The number of children who lost a primary caregiver during COVID was profound. We didn’t necessarily think of that,” she said

Grandparents and other older family caregivers often are a vital bridge between working parents and a well-functioning household. When about half a million people in that demographic died during the pandemic, their families struggled to navigate the responsibilities of work and helping their students with school, Sipe’s group found

A second finding was students lost their sense of connection to their schools and all that comes with that — social lives and a firm place in their communities. That means schools must do “a much better job with engaging a student,” Sipe explained.

Third, many families failed to distinguish between the emergency curriculum districts hobbled together in a frantic two weeks after buildings closed in March, 2020 and a traditional school day.

Parents began thinking what they saw in online class was “all school was,” the superintendent said, “instead of the emergency situation it was. The rigor in the classroom is so much more. They can get a minimal education online, but that is not what school is.”

But that supposition still informs how parents view school attendance, which contributes to the problem of students not coming when they are required to be there, Sipe said.

Without the school’s records in front of them, she said, parents also greatly underestimate how often their child skips school.

Court and more

Truancy court is not the only solution. A Community Accountability Board and school district can work with a family to try a number of actions to get a student to school, such as a plan to fit a family’s situation and the needs of the child.

With the possibility of a monetary penalty in play once again, thanks to Hill’s order, those measures can be effective.

“We have a solution now that is, I think, better that what we had before,” Sipe said, predicting the parents who end up getting fined for school truancy will be in a tiny minority.

Mark Mulvihill as the head of the local ESD can see what is happening in school districts in Umatilla, Morrow, Union and Baker counties and knew the heavy lift of resuming regular school schedules post-pandemic.

He said that’s been especially true for students old enough to do so on their own. Getting up and getting to school was more difficult after nearly two years of working when they wanted to, more or less.

Wrapping around

Students, however, need to be in school 90% of the time to be successful, studies show. In younger students, that’s a family issue and community support — transportation, communication, child care, housing and even laundry help — can solve the problem much of the time.

That’s where her agency can be a boon to families, said Jenni Galloway, supervisor for Umatilla County CARE Program.

The organization is a joint effort of Umatilla County, InterMountain ESD and 10 area school districts. It provides preventive and social services related to health, safety, education and the well-being of at-risk children and their parents.

Her staff finds families are generally open to help with school attendance. “Less than 5% resist, because our engagement is not with a heavy hand,” Galloway said.

She also cannot discount the societal damage pandemic isolation caused. Her employees continue to battle it, and it shows up in schools as much as anywhere else.

“We have parents who want help,” she said.

Umatilla County as test bed

In public education, “every kid gets a shot for 13 years,” Mulvihill said, “but that’s if they are at school nine out of 10 days.”

Like Sipe, Mulvihill and Galloway said what’s offered outside academics helps build community for a child. That’s only become more apparent post-pandemic as students — hungry to again feel they belong — seek out district activities outside the classroom.

That can’t happen for students who aren’t at school in the first place, and Hill’s decision is “monumental” Galloway said.

Hill’s action comes not a second too soon, Timmons said, and it’s even better the judge used a statutory process already in place so new laws aren’t necessary.

Hill also has been generous in offering his court’s time for use in the new truancy court, county officials said.

Timmons said there is an expectation other parts of the state will be watching Umatilla County’s progress in curbing school truancy as a template for their own programs.

The Oregon Department of Education’s 2022-23 statewide report card shows a decline in regular attendance in 2022-23, with the rate falling 2% from 2021-22.

“Rates of regular attendance remain significantly below pre-pandemic levels. We know that students aren’t benefiting from instruction when they are not in the classroom, so this is a serious concern for Oregon’s educators,” DOE Director Charlene Williams noted in the report.

Just more than 38% of students were chronically absent that school year, defined in this state as not attending school for 10% or more of school days.

Most Umatilla County school districts mirrored closely in their numbers from 2023, as follows:

• Pendleton School District, 41.9%

• Hermiston School District, 40.5%

• Umatilla School District, 38.4%

• Milton-Freewater Unified School District, 37.9%

• Pilot Rock School District, 36.2%

• Stanfield School District, 31.9%

• Helix School District, 26.5%

• Echo School District, 19.1%