The Connection between Attendance and In-kind Collection

Parents and families are essential partners in promoting good attendance because they, ultimately, have the bottom-line responsibility for making sure their children get to school every day. When children are young, they are especially dependent upon adults or older siblings to help them get to school or preschool. Just as parents should focus on how their children are performing academically, they have a responsibility to set expectations for good attendance and to monitor their children’s absences, so that missed days do not add up to academic trouble in the future.

Family Engagement: Few parents are aware of the extent to which consistent on-time attendance from the beginning of preschool and/or kindergarten can benefit their children’s school readiness and social development. All staff who come in contact with our families should encourage arriving to school on-time, attending regularly, and involvement/engagement in the Head Start/Early Head Start Program.

Consistency: Young children need consistent and frequent reinforcement to integrate new habits. A month, the typical sequence for recognizing attendance, is too long a time for our youngest students. The more consistent and frequent the positive reinforcement and recognition for students and parents, the stronger the likelihood that good habits will take root.

This is a great connection between parental involvement and In-Kind Collection and are a direct tie into Engagement with the families and showing our Holistic approach to servicing not just the child in the classroom but the families in the community and the resources that surround them.

In order for this to happen we have to first create involvement and form a connection that is inviting not just to the kids in the classroom but the families we service and the agencies we come in contact with.

The Question is: how do we do that? And the answer is: to be inviting to all!

Head Start/Early Head Start is a community program with amazing parts that is geared toward helping and strengthening family connections with the communities and agencies we serve. No agency is an island but together we can be a resource planet.

Family engagement is a collaborative and strengths-based process through which early childhood professionals, families, and children build positive and purposeful relationships. It is a shared responsibility of families and staff at all levels that requires mutual respect for the roles and strengths each has to offer. Family engagement focuses on culturally and linguistically responsive relationship-building with key family members in a child’s life.

And this is how In-kind collection increases!