Alternative learning program combats chronic absenteeism in White River Valley schools

SOUTH ROYALTON — On a recent weekday morning, Micah Perez Halsey and Olivia Kelley made lunch for the students at the White River Valley Supervisory Union’s Waterman campus in South Royalton.

Micah, a 10th grader from Bethel, and Olivia, an 8th grader from South Royalton, are two of 15 students in grades 5 through 10 who attend the Alternative Learning pilot program at the Waterman campus, off Route 107 and separate from other campuses within the district.

Dana Decker, the program director, asked Micah whether he turned on the oven, and told Olivia to cut the rolls. Olivia halved hamburger rolls for cheese steaks while Micah kept an eye on a frying pan, first sauteing onions, then breaking up a slab of hamburger and shaking in salt and pepper.

“Or should I say pepper pig,” Micah joked, riffing on the name of the animated children’s TV character, Peppa.

Alternative Learning, which started at the Waterman campus in the fall, emerged from the WRVSU’s need for a program that would meet the needs of students ages 10 to 15 within the district, said Michaela Martin, the multi-tiered system of supports coordinator for the WRSVU.

The program, which is funded through the supervisory union’s budget, addresses both chronic absenteeism and the reality that some students do not flourish in a traditional academic setting and “need a more hands-on, flexible approach,” Martin said.

For some middle and early high school students, the years from 10 to 15 can be tough. Students may experience bullying, feel they are misunderstood, have physical or mental health concerns, don’t love traditional academics, or don’t quite mesh with the grade level they’ve been slotted into. Some students begin to stay home habitually rather than go to school.

Missing at least two days a month, which is the benchmark, may not sound drastic, but totaled over the academic year that averages between 18 and 20 days, or roughly 10% of the school year, Martin said.

And that is a leading indicator of dropping out of school, Martin said. Not completing high school may have a detrimental effect on students’ long-term mental and physical health and educational and employment prospects, she said.

The public school model is inflexible and outdated for some, said Decker. “It’s really hard to sit for 60 minutes and be talked at. So we individualize their curriculum in order for them to be successful in access to education.”

Andy West, who taught math in the Bethel schools for nearly 40 years and is now a part-time math and science teacher in the Alternative Learning program, said that “we still expect kids to sit at desks and there’s just some kids that really are challenged by that.”

The program, said WRVSU Superintendent Jamie Kinnarney, “essentially provides a little more runway for students. If they were ready to access some classes at the high school campus, but maybe not all classes, they could be here at the Waterman campus, where they build continuity and safety with the teachers that they’re working with.”

The WRVSU did not want to send students out of district for alternative learning programs because, Martin said, “it cost so much and there aren’t many otherwise. This program meets the needs of our students while being fiscally responsible.”

If a student needed to be placed in a therapeutic setting outside their respective school districts, the average cost per student, including transportation, would be between $100,000 and $120,000, Kinnarney said. Presently, the budget for as many as 15 students within the Alternative Learning program costs around $325,000.

Research shows that inconsistent school attendance is a key predictor of more than high school graduation, said Dr. Heidi Schumacher, an associate professor of pediatrics at the UVM Larner College of Medicine and the lead investigator for Everyday Counts, an initiative to reduce chronic absenteeism in Vermont schools. (The Alternative Learning program is separate from the UVM initiative.)

Just as doctors look at heart rate, weight and blood pressure, “we’re increasingly calling (chronic absenteeism) a pediatric vital sign. If you only look at unexcused absence we miss a lot of things that matter,” Schumacher said.

For that reason the old term, “truancy,” with its implications of failure and consequent punishment-expulsion from school – has been retired in favor of “chronic absenteeism,” which Schumacher said better expresses the confluence of personal, medical and societal issues that can contribute to staying home from school.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the national chronic absenteeism rate hovered around 18%. During the pandemic, that percentage climbed both nationally and in Vermont to around 40%, said Martin.

Post-COVID, the average percentage in Vermont is now around 30%, said Schumacher. Cut ours in half. Difference between last year’s rate and this year’s.

Martin and the Alternative Learning team track students in the district through data. When attendance begins to drop off, they talk to both students and parents and design a Personalized Learning Plan “that documents what they want to do and their passion, so we want to try to partner them with a mentor,” Martin said.

The Alternative Learning program, which is in the basement of the Waterman campus, comprises one large central classroom, a kitchen, a staff office and a shop in which students can repair equipment and engines, or build desks, benches, tables and bookshelves. Students do reading, math and science classes during the day.

During a visit last week, a completed picnic table sat upside down in the shop, a first coat of stain newly applied. Students are in the shop two afternoons a week. The program also includes a Winter Wellness program that lets students get outside to ski or snowshoe. The students learn both academic skills and life skills, such as cooking, finances and budgeting.

The staff is divided between full and part-time: two full-time teachers, three behavioral interventionists from the Clara Martin Center in Randolph, a clinician who visits once a week, a Student Assistance Program counselor who comes three times a week and two paraeducators. Staff from the South Royalton Health Center visit once a week to work with students, Martin said.

Alternative Learning also includes medical and dental care at, and transportation to and from, the South Royalton Health Center so that parents don’t have to miss work, and students don’t have to miss school, Martin said.

To feed the students both breakfast and lunch, the program relies on individual and community donations, discounts and coupons, Decker said.

On a visit last week, a group of kids came back with Andy West from picking up 600 pounds of donated wood from Colton Enterprises in Pittsfield, Vt., that will be used during sugaring season at the middle school in Bethel.

Some other students were in the shop steaming long pieces of wood that, with the help of Bonna Wieler, a retired afterschool teacher who comes in two afternoons a week to oversee canoe building, will be bent to make the ribs of a Geodesic Airolite canoe. They’ll launch the canoe at Silver Lake in Barnard in the spring.

Destiny Duval is a special education paraprofessional who began helping out in the program in early February. She also works in the White River Valley School in downtown South Royalton. From what she has observed, the Alternative Learning program “gives kids a better and different opportunity to learn. The biggest thing is building relationships. I like watching the kids thrive. I know a lot of the kids prefer to be hands-on to learn.”

The goal is for students to go back to their respective public middle and high schools or on to vocational programs, and to “be self-sustaining within the community when they graduate,” Martin said.

Whether that means full-time work, the military, college, law enforcement, or something else, “we would help them do that,” Martin added.

Olivia wants to spend her junior and senior years learning how to rebuild motorcycle and dirt bike engines at the Hartford Area Career and Technology Center in White River Junction.

“I’ve been obsessing over them since I was seven,” she said. She is now getting some hands-on experience with small engines through the Alternative Learning program. She also likes to bake.

Seth Perkins lives on a farm right on the Bethel/Royalton line where the family grows corn and raises pigs. In eighth grade, Seth has an eye on becoming a car mechanic. He likes the program so far because of the chance to work in the shop on a lawn mower and a snow mobile, among other small engines.

West hopes that in time the Alternative Learning program becomes “just another one of those pathways that shouldn’t be viewed as good, bad, negative or positive. It should just be viewed as another option that fits the learning style of certain kids — just like your tech centers do, just like your AP courses do. It’s just another avenue for kids to get their education and be contributing members of society as they go through school.”

In the early days of the program, Decker said, the staff focused on fostering daily attendance. Now nearly six months later, with an average attendance rate of 90%, she said, “our attendance records are amazing.”