Behind successful attendance improvement plans are students who found support and educators who made student engagement a daily priority.
Channell Segura, Superintendent of Pojoaque Valley School District, is one of those educators.
Each year, districts across New Mexico develop attendance improvement plans to address chronic absenteeism. In Pojoaque Valley, that process begins with a close examination of attendance data and a collaborative effort to understand why students are missing school.
“We pull our leadership teams together and conduct a root cause analysis,” Segura said. “We look at our data and ask, ‘Why are students missing school, and what can we do differently?'”
For Channell Segura, one of the most important questions is how schools can become places that students want to attend.
“How do we create the spaces and the places for kids to want to be?” Segura said. “We’re trying to make school great so that students have a passion and desire to come to school, connect with their peers, connect with their teachers, and be involved.”
There are so many different things that can affect whether a student comes to school. Channell Segura emphasized that attendance challenges rarely stem from a single cause. Students may face transportation barriers, bullying, academic disengagement, or other obstacles that prevent them from attending school consistently.
Drawing from seven years of experience as a high school English teacher, Channell Segura believes that relationships remain one of the most powerful attendance strategies available.
“My priority was always to learn every student’s name during the first week of school,” she said. “I greeted them at the door every day and created a culture of care in my classroom.”
That same philosophy now guides the district’s approach to attendance improvement. Staff members work closely with families to seek solutions that remove barriers preventing students from coming to school. With this approach in place, Pojoaque Valley has already seen an increase in attendance.
“I’m really proud of the commitment our adults have to helping kids,” Segura stated. “Our community wraps around our students, and people are willing to go above and beyond to support families.”
For Segura, attendance improvement is not a finished task but an ongoing effort that requires schools and communities to continually adapt to meet the needs of their students.