During the pandemic, many schools were forced to close our doors to parents and community partners. Our school was no different, and our doors remained closed for over a year. When we reopened, our school had under 10% of families who would attend events, and 57% of our students were chronically absent. We lost all but one of our community partners. Through strategic implementation of three targeted new structures over the last two years, we have decreased our chronic absenteeism rate to 26% and have increased our parent engagement to 60%. Our families now see our school as a hub for whatever they need, and through this our academic scores are also on the rise.
Heike Klein has been in education 38 years. She has served in multiple states as a classroom teacher and instructional coach. She monitors our data for effectiveness and works with staff to implement effectively.
Dr. Calvert has been in education since 2007 working primarily with underserved populations. In her time at Grant Elementary School, chronic absenteeism is dramatically dropping and academic scores are rapidly rising. Grant was a school on improvement, and is quickly working to move off of that list due to consistent growth.