The Altoona Area School District’s goal of increasing student attendance was highlighted during the school board’s committee of the whole meeting Tuesday night.

Superintendent Brad Hatch said 1,595 students — or 22% of the district’s student population — were “chronically absent” during the 2023-24 school year, missing more than 18 days of instruction.

The administration’s goal for the 2024-25 school year is to get at least 160 students — or 10% of those chronically absent last year — back in school, Hatch said, adding increased communication with parents is the key to obtaining the goal.

Hatch said he thinks the district’s administrators need to make additional phone calls home to parents and make personal connections with the students.

Board member David Francis said he believes there has to be a reason students are missing several days of school, citing bullying and family environment concerns. Hatch said he thinks there are many contributing reasons that all boil down to a connectedness issue.

“We need to make school a place where kids want to be,” Hatch said. “That’s what it starts with. It starts with school being somewhere where kids are excited to wake up in the morning and go to.”

Hatch said the district’s challenge is to develop a way to make students feel like school officials want them to attend school and succeed.

“That’s a joint effort. That’s everybody,” he said, noting cafeteria workers, custodians, teachers and the people students see when they walk through the school’s doors all play an important role in impacting a student’s connection to the district.

“They need to know that we care about them and that we want them to be successful and trust that we’re going to do everything that we can do to make their educational experience worthwhile for them,” Hatch said.

Other goals set

As superintendent, Hatch’s goal for the district is to attract and retain talent, especially in administrative areas, he said.

Hatch said he plans to develop a compensation scale that would be implemented with all noncollective bargaining employees in the district. Then he’ll bring his plan for board approval at a future meeting.

“What I’m going to do is I’m going to research and provide the board with concrete qualitative data about hiring retention,” Hatch said, noting salary rates and starting a retention plan that can be incorporated into the employee agreement.

Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education Mark Harrington said his goal is to increase the percentage of students who pass the biology Keystone exam by 5%. About 41% of students passed the exam last year, which is slightly below the statewide average, according to Harrington.

“That’s something we want to improve on,” Harrington said, adding the district is reviewing its science standards this year.

The goal for Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction & Elementary Programs Haley Fleegle for the 2024-25 school year is to increase literacy skills in elementary-aged students and ensure they’re able to read on their reading levels.

Fleegle said the district is currently in the process of collecting baseline data on benchmark assessments, which are used to determine reading levels. She said her goal is to have students show a 17% or higher increase in these assessments by the end of the year.

Earlier in the meeting, Fleegle gave a presentation about Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, a program aimed at giving children from birth to age 5 early literacy support.

Every month, the imagination library will ship books home to support early literacy, which indicates future academic success, brain development and self-confidence, Fleegle said, adding the books are predetermined by a child’s age.

A kickoff event will be held at 9:30 a.m. Sept. 13 at the Altoona Public Library, where children who live within the Altoona Area School District can register for the program.

Mirror Staff Writer Matt Churella is at 814-946-7520.