FARMINGTON — Mt. Blue High School Interim Principal Joel Smith gave his administrative report to the Regional School Unit 9 board of directors Tuesday, Sept. 12, and stated he would make absenteeism a priority for the school year.
According to Smith, MBHS administration and counseling spent the summer working on ways to tackle the issue of attendance. “We’re really focusing on attendance this year, making sure that we’re monitoring that and trying to make strides to improve that,” he told the board.
In the previous school year, MBHS was the leader in chronic absenteeism among all the schools in the district, with a rate of 38.95% in 2022-2023. By contrast, in 2017-18 it was 28.63%.
While the rate has seen improvement since the COVID-19 pandemic, which was the highest rated year of chronic absenteeism for MBHS in the last six years, Smith and Superintendent Christian Elkington believe they can bring that number down.
Smith told the board MBHS had set an internal goal of reducing the rate of absenteeism overall by 3%. “I know that the district is looking for a 5% [decrease] over the next few years, but we’re trying to get to that 90% and see that happen this year.”
Smith also mentioned that MBHS had made improvements on infrastructure and how the school monitors student attendance, hoping that will help engage with the students better and work with them on their barriers in attendance.
“[We’re] just trying to be more proactive in getting students where they are and helping them to engage in their academics,” he said.
“Have you done any surveys on why kids are not attending to find out real causes?” Director Debbie Smith of Weld asked Smith.
“I did a staff survey this summer,” he said. “I asked questions, not necessarily targeting the attendance issues specifically, but questions in general about how to make improvements to the campus. I have some ideas, and some of those ideas we’ve looked at and how we were approaching some of our attendance structures.
“A lot of it comes down to positive relationships,” he added, “and a student’s feeling a sense of belonging. And I think we do a lot of those things pretty well but obviously, there are areas we need to improve and we’re working on that.”
Smith also expressed his excitement over the international student program, which brings students from all over the world to attend MBHS under a tuition-based visa. According to Smith, they will have nine students in attendance this year and they will be coming from Thailand, Spain, Mexico and France.
Smith added that 13 students from the Canary Islands will also be coming to MBHS in October. “So that’ll be exciting,” Smith said. “They’re going to be traveling all over the state, going to Acadia, going to Sugarloaf and Portland.”
“The international program is definitely something that brings a lot of pride to the Mt. Blue Campus and also enriches our campus,” he added.
Smith shared with the board that the renovations to the gym floor have seen delays due to the weather.
“As you can imagine the weather and the drying of paint, this isn’t great for drying paint,” Smith stated. “We’re still not complete, but we’ve managed to navigate through how we do gym on days like this and we’ve managed so far.”
“I did see corn hole in the hallways today,” Smith added. “So that was good.”
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