School+Counselor+Interview


 * Interview with School Counselor **


 * **Question ** || **Answer** ||
 * Do you feel that attendance is a problem at Arvada High School? || First off, yes. Second, my question for you is attendance a problem or a symptom? Is attendance more of a systemic problem or just that the student does not value education? ||
 * What concerns you have with attendance at this school? || Our school does not address social issues and focuses merely on academics. I feel that we need to focus more on the student at a whole person, not just their academics. The population that AHS serves is much more diverse and has much higher needs than other high schools. This needs to be addressed and we need to value all aspects of our student population. ||
 * What do you think can improve AHS attendance issues? || I think that our school needs to adapt a more rigid model such as the model adopted in Hennepin County Minnesota. This model really focused on poor attendance as a school issue, changed their practices and delivered results. I feel that attendance has to be a priority for schools. If there is poor attendance then there is a need that the school is not meeting. For most students, the 85%, having a rigid attendance policy in place would correct this. If it when 5 attendance, meeting, 10 attendance, mandatory attendance, more than that the courts would get involved. ||
 * What consequences should there be for poor attendance? || I feel that the consequences should be more clear to students and the community. There should be a set range of consequences based on the number of unexcused absences. If it is a student's first offense, they can be on the more lenient side of the range of consequences, if it is their second offense then the student will receive the more severe consequence. The consequences should be set so that all teachers/staff are on the same page and there is more fairness to our attendance policy. ||
 * What would your ideal change be to AHS to improve school attendance? || A school within a school. This would be mainly for the 5 and 10% category of students, however, it would also impact the 85%. This would tell all students that attendance is mandatory, simply put. The school within a school would house the chronic behavior problems and truancy cases. Students would be able to move out of the school if behavior or attendance improved. This school would have a set of teachers and would have a different schedule than the rest of the building. This would decrease the amount of interaction between those students and the rest of the student population. I feel that this would send a very clear message to students that we value safety at AHS. It would also give an alternative to the students with chronic behavior/attendance issues a chance to receive interventions and continue to receive academics. I feel that there would be pros and cons to this but in general it would send a clear message to the students and the community that AHS values school and school safety. ||
 * How would you include the community in this decision? || I would make the attendance policy very transparent to the community. I would look at attendance for the entire school every semester and tell the community what issues we were having with attendance. I would hold a community meeting to raise awareness. I would want the entire community to understand why the changes were being made and what the consequences were. ||

This interview really gave me the idea of how to make attendance better at AHS. He fully agreed that attendance was an issue at the school and that it needed to be addressed. He had proposed this solution to the school before but there was different administration during that time. He felt that the change of administration has not helped with attendance as well. This interview was very helpful and really shed some light on how to encourage better attendance at AHS.
 * <span style="color: #008080; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 120%;">What I gained from my interview with the school counselor: **