Every Day Matters battles chronic absenteeism with local students

By on Wednesday, June 28th, 2023 in Eastern/Southeast Oregon News More Top Stories

JOHN DAY – Grant County Education Service District’s Every Day Matters Program Coordinator Bonni Booth was on KJDY’s Coffee Time to discuss efforts taken and being made to increase school attendance among Grant County students.

Booth said several of the schools had incentives geared toward battling chronic absenteeism:

“An example is there was an attendance challenge at Humbolt Elementary, and if the kids met the goals of the attendance challenge, the reward was a banana split party.

It was actually really effective, and there were actually quite a few kids that qualified for the banana split party. I was right in there with some older youth that volunteered for the event, slicing bananas and scooping ice cream!”

Listen to the full podcast here: