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Jackson Elementary School employees are moving beyond the classroom to tackle barriers to student achievement where they often begin — in the home. “I just believe that’s a part of how we get to know our kids,” said Marisa Poling, principal at Jackson. “It’s something I’ve always done as an educator.” A $10,000 Community Health Improvement Plan grant awarded to the elementary school this year provides funding for staff involved with Jackson’s Family Success Team to visit students’ homes. The school is particularly focusing its attention on kindergarten students. The home visits, which two school employees conduct together, help them determine which of their students’ needs may be going unmet or undermet. Students’ behaviors in class, or their absence from it, can be indicators that lead to a home visit. School administrators, including Medford School District’s director of secondary student achievement Kevin Campbell, have pointed to kindergarten through second grade attendance as a priority, to “establish that pattern of positive attendance early.” Oregon Department of Education is increasingly honing in on attendance, launching an “Every Day Matters” campaign in October, offering resources for families and educators to boost regular attendance. The state’s newly designed report cards for schools and districts, also released in October, for the first time narrowed attendance data to capture only kindergarten through second grade regular attenders. The metric shows the percentage of students per district who attended at least 90 percent of their enrolled school days. Oregon’s rate was 83 percent in 2017-2018. Medford fell slightly below, with 81 percent regular attenders in kindergarten to second grade. School report cards show regular attendance across all grades. Jackson, a K-6 school, had 78 percent regular attenders last year, two percentage points below the Oregon average of 80 percent. “The sooner (students) can feel comfortable in school and start the learning process, they start to gain confidence and all sorts of really positive traits that are going to carry them into the workforce,” Poling said. Jackson’s outreach to families goes beyond attendance, however. With 90 percent of its students qualifying for free and reduced lunch, it has the highest poverty rate among Medford schools, according to the state’s most recent report. It runs the Family Neighborhood Center, where students and their families can find basic supplies from shoes to backpacks. The Family Success Team meetings, which take place on Fridays, are opportunities for parents to get connected with the community partners that also make up the team. They include the Maslow Project, ACCESS and Jackson Care Connect. “Families don’t always know what support systems are available,” said Nancy McKinnis, Jackson Care Connect’s community engagement coordinator, in a press release. The goal of the work, including the home visits, is to make sure that families, whether underinsured or in need of school supplies, can access what they need to get their kids into the classroom and performing well. “Essentially, we have agencies all the time asking how they can help,” Poling said — which will become more important as the CHIP grant money will likely run out by the end of the year. “We are trying to think outside the box around how to sustain our family outreach,” she said. Reach reporter Kaylee Tornay at [email protected].