ABSENT

Last night I went to the premiere of a new documentary:

ABSENT

It is an extremely high quality feature length documentary produced by ICYA on student absenteeism in Manitoba, especially in Winnipeg’s North End. It powerfully communicates the mindblowing issue with clarity and sensitivity. It is available for free, you don’t even need a Netflix subscription!

There are 35,000 young people in Manitoba who are not getting an education because of absenteeism! Of course the problem is very complex, each of those 35,000 students has a unique story. I would invite you to watch the documentary and then continue reading here.

I have a few ideas of what we need to do to address this issue and since everything revolves around funding, we will start with that:

1. Funding #1 – Currently schools get funding based on how many students are registered, and how many students are showing up at their schools. This may have been fine in the past, but this means there is no funding for any of the young people who are not going to school. Students who are missing school are the people who need funding the most! My proposal would be to change the funding model so that there is an education fund for each catchment, every child of school age (and those who are still pursuing high school after 18) would receive funding. The schools would continue to receive funding per attending student, but there would be additional funding to hire staff whose job it would be to build relationships with the families of young people (and the young people themselves) who are not at school, and to help them overcome their barriers. Let’s call these people Vanquishers of Truancy (VT). Probably not the final name…but…
   • Pros
     • it keeps the current funding model going and allows schools to operate at capacity even if students are not all there
     • provides ongoing funding for support for absent students
   • Cons
     • it requires additional funding – got to come from somewhere
     • requires transparency of actual numbers, which has not been forthcoming in the past
2. Funding #2 – Apparently schools get funding based on predictions of how many students are expected to register. The idea is that they reevaluate part way through the year, and funding is adjusted based on actual attendance. This adjustment is rare and not realistic, since classrooms, supplies and teachers have been put in place for the number of students who were expected to register, you can’t just fire teachers and return classrooms and supplies. My proposal would be to learn from the history of each school, student and community. Say the record over the last 5 years is that half the students in the community register and show up for the beginning of school, but rarely attend once the school year gets going. So funding for teachers and classrooms would be half of what is normal. We hire less teachers, prepare less classrooms, and we hire our superhero Vanquishers of Truancy who will be observing and helping students who are struggling, helping them overcome barriers.
   • pros
     • our VT’s would be present in classrooms and in the community from the beginning of the year
     • doesn’t require additional funding
   • cons
     • means some teachers are out of a job – maybe we could hire some of them as VT’s?
     • buildings likely suffer, as some of the funding for them would be given to VT’s
3. Being a superhero VT might seem easy to you, but I think it might not be. You need people who can be gentle and encouraging, sensitive and empathic, plus they need to be strong and disciplined and work out in the community with very little supervision. Some of these qualities often do not come in the same person. So, I submit that there is a team that always works together, two people (or more) who have varying strengths and training, who are culturally relevant and sensitive and could get in the homes of people in the community. ICYA has learned quite a bit from the last few years of Engage Education, that model should be used as a starting point for the VT’s, but of course they will need to be flexible and able to adapt, and come up with new systems and techniques.

This is a group think piece, please help me process these thoughts, adjust them, add to them, take away, and come up with something that can work. We NEED something that works!

Then we need to begin the process of making change at the provincial government level (funding comes from there). This will hopefully mean things like press releases, marketing, petitions, meetings with provincial government, school trustees, educators and probably others. Are we ready to do something about this?