Wayne-Westland Community Schools has adopted a new attendance policy to combat excessive absences in students. The district has partnered with Concentric Educational Solutions (CES) Inc. to help stop students from building up too many absences in order to ensure every student receives a quality and complete education.

Starting in about two weeks, 25 families will be receiving informational home visits from CES. These home visits are intended to assist in gathering information from students and parents to help create a better quality of education in the district. The new program including home visits will not replace any existing support systems for students and their families, but will be an added support system. The home visits do not occur based only off of poor attendance but they take place due to students having poor attendance, poor behavior, and poor performance in school in general.

“It’s powerful to have that face-to-face meeting and that’s what this is,” Principal Mr.Wegher said.

Some counselors have seen an issue with attendance, and they suggest that it is important to a quality education. The program was implemented as an additional support system and is not intended to alter any existing rules when it comes to unexcused absences.

“There definitely seems to be more of a problem with attendance. It seems to be a concern. Studies correlate poor attendance with poor performance,” counselor Mrs.Martin said. This program came about as a response to this attendance issue.

“I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the data and sometimes it’s just needing more support. Ninth grade is where discipline issues are, so we add support for ninth grade,” Wegher said. The district and the school pay close attention to what is going on and adjust rules and systems to accommodate students and their families.

This program does not affect all of the Wayne-Westland school district. Wegher said that this will likely only be put into effect at John Glenn, Wayne Memorial, Franklin, Adams, and Hix.

Another important thing to note is that there is no cut off or number of absences one has to have in order to receive a home visit. The decision for a family to receive a home visit is based on attendance, behavior, grades, and other factors that might suggest that a student needs more support.

In the past, there have been issues with attendance, but it is not always the student’s fault. This new program will focus on helping those students who may not be able to make it to school or have things going on at home that prevent them from being able to make it to school.

This program is going to begin with home visits to about 25 families. Wegher said he hopes that by the end of the year they expand to home visits for about 50 families.

This program has the potential to be a great asset to the school and more importantly, its students.