Chance to win car boosts school attendance

Thursday, April 29, 1999 | 11:37 a.m.

Clark High School students with fewer than three absences could win a year's use of a car.

Students with improved absences will get the chance to win prizes that include movie tickets, backpacks and CDs.

The contests at Clark are part of a districtwide incentive plan that coincides with the Clark County School District's new attendance regulation. According to the regulation, students who are absent from a course more than 10 days a semester automatically fail unless they appeal. The policy went into effect during the second semester.

District officials are also cracking down on attendance this year by sending home truancy referrals for three or more truancies in high school, Ruth Joseph, school district attendance administrator, said.

The district has written more than 500 truancy referrals for grades six through 11 this year. The number is up 400 percent from last year when referrals were given only to students in grades six through eight.

But the hard line has not been enough to coax students back to school. Even with the tougher policy in place, nearly 130 students at Clark High were absent more than 15 times during the first nine weeks of school.

So each high school came up with incentives to address the attendance problems, Joseph said.

"An incentive for a kid at Clark High School is a car," Wayne Tanaka, principal at Clark said. "If they won't do it for a chance at this, they're not going to do it."

"There are a lot of kids who have improved their absences and have come (to school) to win this car," George Pena, a senior at Clark, said.

Freshman, sophomore or junior students with fewer than three absences will be eligible for the May 14 drawing for a Saturn. The winner will have use of the car for the entire 1999-2000 school year. If a student without a license wins, the family will be able to use the car.

The school is paying for the incentive with a $10,000 grant from the Clark County Public Education Foundation.

Word of the car contest and parenting programs offered at the school have helped to improve attendance at Clark, Tanaka said.

"Clark essentially has an empty parking lot," Tanaka said. "Our kids don't have that kind of money."

Two years ago the average daily attendance at Clark High School was 89 percent. Last year the daily attendance was 92.2 percent. Districtwide, the average daily attendance was 92 percent both years.

A student survey reported that many absences were attributed to jobs and babysitting, Tanaka said.

Last year 67 percent of the senior class had part-time jobs, he said.

"That's a personal commitment on the parent's part," Tanaka said. Parents need to know the children's work schedule to avoid conflicts with school schedules, he added.