Benton Harbor Area Schools is launching a new program to improve attendance at the high school.
The board of education was told this week about the Strive for Five Challenge, which will create a financial reward for high school students every time they attend a full week of classes. For each full week of unmissed school, each enrolled student gets $100 placed into an account accessible via an electronic card, up to $1,000 maximum.
The challenge is modeled after a program that’s been successful at reducing chronic absenteeism at Detroit Public Schools. Benton Harbor Trustee Elnora Gavin said this will help in Tiger Nation as well.
“This is an opportunity to reward positive behavior,” Gavin said. “And too often our children have seen students who’ve gotten in trouble get all this attention and things of that nature. This is an opportunity to incentivize positive behavior.”
A student must opt-in, and parents of students under 18 have to consent. Trustee Trenton Bowens wanted to make sure the messaging about this new program is handled the right way.
“How do we frame this conversation? Because it’s going to look like we’re bribing kids to school,” Bowens said.
Board President Dashuna Robinson said this is an innovative way to help students.
“I would just like to stress, I hope the media sees it as innovative and doesn’t do us like a particular article did and said we’re so desperate for kids to come to school, we’re now paying them because there was an article that said something to that effect as it relates to one of our teaching initiatives that we implemented,” Robinson said.
A meeting with district leaders and parents was held earlier this week, and Trustee Angela Doyle reported a warm reception to the program among parents who attended. District Finance Director Angela Brock-Carter said she won’t know the cost until they know how many students opt in, but the district does have the funds.
“The funds are coming from our general fund,” Brock-Carter said. “We want to use our district funds to invest in our students’ attendance and also to kind of step our attendance campaign up another notch.”
It was noted at Tuesday’s meeting that chronic absenteeism at Benton Harbor High School is as high as 84%. For now, this program only applies to the high school. It runs through April 6.
