With attendance being an important factor for students’ experience at SHS, the school wanted to create an effective system to make sure students and their parents are informed and up to date with attendance.

This new system was put into place the first day of school after fall break. If a student has been absent for a majority of the day, parents will receive a pre-recorded phone call to inform them of the student’s absence. This only applies if the main office has not received a phone call from the guardian stating that the student will be absent or if the student leaves school without signing out.

“We are trying to improve our communication with parents,” Assistant Principal Amy Boone said. “This is also as a reminder so we can accurately code student attendance.”

Boone says that within a day of having this new system, the office saw improvements in the amount of calls received from parents when their child is absent from school.

To improve communication even more, there are plans to send the pre-recorded messages in multiple languages. As of right now, the calls are only being sent out in English and Spanish. The next step of this is to record the message in languages such as Burmese, Arabic and French.

With these new changes, some students find it to be extremely beneficial, like junior Megan Frank. She believes that the school will see a lot of improvements with this.

“I think it will be beneficial because there are a lot of students who just skip school,” Frank said. “Hopefully it will lead to more students being at school since their parents will know now.”