Peoria County regional superintendent of schools Beth Crider says her office’s efforts to reduce truancy are producing results.
“The county board has chosen to invest in our office to give us more case workers that are ‘boots on the ground, knocking on doors,’” said Crider. “We’ve had some tremendous successes in the last couple months, and they’ve only been working since October.”
The Peoria County Regional Office of Education 48 website identifies two truancy/dropout prevention programs: Project START for students in Peoria Public Schools, and Project TARGET for all public school students in the county.
The goals of the programs include providing immediate and targeted assistance with attendance by having family/student support specialists work in partnership with parents, students, and school officials.
“We just exited 39 students that we've been working with since the fall, that have improved their attendance to 80% or above — and that is huge,” said Crider.
She said offering some incentives to young students has led to positive outcomes.
“We had a child that got to be an honorary ball boy at the Peoria High basketball game because his attendance improved so greatly,” she said. “We had a second grader whose parents were incarcerated. He was living with his grandma, didn't want to go to school. Our case worker worked and worked and worked with this child, finally got him to go back to school, and he got to meet the Manual [High School] basketball team.”
Crider said basketball isn’t the only incentive, though. She said a big step is making the kids feel comfortable and welcome about attending school and being around other children.
“One thing we've also found out is that a haircut, clothes — those things are important and they matter,” she said. “So we're working on a partnership with Woodruff Career and Technical Center, because they have a barbering program.”
