Attendance, enrollment improvements focus of GISD strategic plan

Within the Graham ISD strategic plan is a goal to achieve a higher student attendance rate and communication plan and the district is working to make those efforts a reality.

The district’s strategic plan set a student attendance rate goal of 97% district wide and sought to create a plan to communicate the benefits of increasing student attendance and how to communicate that to the stakeholders of the district.

GISD CFO Gary Browning provided an update to the school board Wednesday, Nov. 12 regarding the district’s efforts so far.

“This is a regular part of our cabinet meetings. We do this weekly, review the data, as well as with our principals at their meetings and our administrative team as a whole,” Browning said. “Each week, we’ve begun asking campuses to collect their enrollment and their attendance rates, their ADA, and keep track of that and see how it’s changing from week to week.”

Browning said the district is looking to address chronically absent students by identifying them and attempting to work with their parents and guardians to get them in school more consistently.

“A lot of our attendance drops throughout the year result from chronically absent students. It’s a few students who generate a lot of absences,” he said. “If we can address that group, that’ll be key to keeping our attendance rates up throughout the year.”

The CFO said teachers can do a better job when students are consistently in the classroom and not developing gaps over time in their learning.

“The key thing is to keep kids in the classroom where they can learn,” Browning said. “I think we keep that as our focus, and we let parents and the community know that’s our focus, and we have a better chance of bringing everybody on board with us and partnering with them to improve the situation.”

During the August budget workshop, Browning said the district is facing declining enrollment and attendance rates, which was discussed during both budget meetings. 

Since 2015, with the exception of 2022, the district has seen a decline in enrollment, with 2,445 in October 2015 and now 2,122 anticipated for 2026.

“A major factor in funding from the state is enrollment and attendance. And so have to be aware that our numbers may not be quite what they were this year next year if the trend continues,” Browning said in August.

The district is in communication with campuses to track newly enrolled students in regards to those being from neighboring school districts or private schools.

“What we are planning on doing in the future is asking our parents (that exit the district) if they intend to return. That would be a practice that we would want to add into our practices in Graham,” Superintendent Mary Johnston said in August.

A general education student who receives no additional special services will provide the district $35 per day from the state.

“A student who does receive special services can help us with funding up to $55 per day,” Browning said. “…Loss of one student in enrollment costs GISD between $6,380 and $10,000 in the school year. So 30 students would equate to between $191,400 and $300,000.”

The district provided campuses a spreadsheet that is broken down into grade level and campus totals. 

Campuses are being asked to establish attendance rate goals and track increases or decreases in weekly enrollment and attendance.

“Another purpose of this data is that if you see a minus one in your enrollment column is to think about putting a name and a face to that number,” Browning said.

Browning said if a campus loses enrollment, they must identify the students who withdrew and gain an understanding of why they left.

“If you think it’s possible to get them back, contact the parent. In other words, if they didn’t move away physically, if they withdrew to a homeschool, to another school in the area, is there a way we can contact that parent and say ‘We really would like to have your student at Graham ISD. We feel like we can provide the services they need and the education that they need,’” he said.

The district is also tasking campuses that gain enrollment over a week’s period to make follow-up contact with the parents and guardians of students expressing positivity.

If there is an attendance drop over a period of weeks, campuses are being asked to look for the reasons such as many reported sicknesses on campus or in a particular grade level.

Browning keeps a spreadsheet that tracks the data at the district level. He said the district is down four students overall from when they started tracking the data and the attendance rate has also fallen.

“Our attendance percentage is a little bit higher right now than it was last year, and our enrollment is less than it was last year, but our enrollment at the beginning of this year was much higher than it was at the end of the year last year. So we picked up a good number of students over the summer back to GISD so that’s a positive thing,” he said.

While last year the district started with an enrollment of 2,164, by the same time they were down 17 students to 2,147.

“This year we started off at 2,146 and were down four students to 2,142. We don’t want it to be down at all, but the rate of decline is less than it had been in previous years,” Browning said. “We hope to hold that consistent, because throughout the months in the early to late winter, is when we see the dropoffs tend to occur in both attendance and enrollment throughout the district.”