HIGH POINT, N.C. — Community participation, attendance, and disciplinary action are a few of the biggest challenges schools face.
At High Point Central High School, there is a new program called Stroll on the Boulevard, and it is showing a positive trend.
The High Point Central High School Principal, Mike Hettenbach, said he came up with the idea.
"Whenever we need help with parents or students who may be making these choices, who are young teenagers, and we just need help from the home, we ask them if they'd like to spend the day with their students," said Hettenbach. "We swag them out with a tee shirt that says, 'I took a stroll on the Boulevard to advocate for my child's education, what would you do, call the school,' and it's starting to pick up more and more and more."
How it works is family members can come to visit the school and spend a day with their students, sit in a class, or hang out through lunch to learn about their students' experience and support them in whatever ways they need.
"There's no one thing fix all for everything, there are just multiple layers, so when it comes to absenteeism, we'll do these random morning tardy checks, if students are coming in late, my support team, graduation team, social worker, counselors, all of them, we stopped the students if they're late, we do a quick lookup on their grades, low absences tardies and if it's pretty bad, we may ask the parent to come in and help," he said. "That's kind of how we curb that and with discipline, same thing, and we've seen every piece of data we've had here at High Point Central this year, and it has gone in a positive direction."
He said they don't do it right away, but if there are a lot of reentry meetings, where a student receives a consequence, they bring all support staff to the table and discuss what support the student may need.
"It's interesting how often you find out the barriers that are going on with our young people and even our families, so then if it continues, we may ask the parent to come in and support us for the day.," he said. "Ironically, you would think every student would be like, 'Oh my gosh, my mom or dad, my grandma, my uncle is shadowing me all day,' but at the end of the day, a lot of the students enjoyed it and they were able to see their parents experience their school day."
Hettenbach said this helps parents feel more comfortable with the school, gets them connected to the school's lines of communication, helps them learn about how their kid is doing in classes, and walks them through where the students need to adjust.
"Midway through last year, we were just trying to find another layer in looking for parent parental support advocacy for their students," said Hattenbach. "What we're realizing too is that the parents are feeling comfortable after coming into the school and typically a lot of parents feel a little bit awkward coming into schools for their students, and we've seen a lot of success out of it."
Hettenbach said it has contributed to a 50% decrease in disciplinary incidents, chronic attendance is down 13%, and student attendance is up 6%.
Miguel Gonzalez-Martinez is a Freshman at High Point Central High School. He said his dad came in to observe him in school.
"My father came here, and when he walked through the door, I was embarrassed like any other person would be, but he is the type of person to help me out when I need it and he was there and saw me doing my work," said Miguel Gonzalez-Martinez.
He said while it took some warming up, it wasn't a bad experience.
"I saw a couple of giggles, I saw a couple of laughs, and the day after that they asked me some questions, they were asking what my dad was doing here," said Gonzalez-Martinez. "I told them about the program, about what was going on, and they said that was cool."
Not only that, but he said he felt safer having his dad there. He isn't the only one who has participated in the program.
"I have seen a couple of parents around wearing the same shirt as my father did when he was in the program," he said. "They are doing a very good job, the program is a huge success, since parents are walking in, looking at what their students are doing, watching them do the work, helping them too in case they are in trouble, or if they have a problem, the parents always there to talk to you."
Tikela Evans has been a school counselor for High Point Central High School for 19 years.
She said it's a program that works.
Mr. Hattenbach thought outside of the box and wanted a way to connect families and parents within the school community," she said. "Their attendance improves because they're nervous because they don't know if their parent is going to show back up. I think they're finding more ways to be engaged in their academic performance. Some of these parents that have come with their children will be first generation so they are excited for them to get back on track. The kid is excited to get back on track because some of them have aspirations to go to college."
Evans said one challenge is getting the community involved and this helps fix that.
"It's been really hard to get parents involved, so I think with the program, parents can see how open the school is, they can tell their friends and families that may have students here, and maybe that will help with involvement," Evans said. "Not only to push their kids to be academically successful, to build up memberships, PTOs, and our athletic boosters. It's for them to get back involved and make the school a community school."
Evans said sometimes when students are off track, the only difference can be just one or two classes, and the school can get students realigned, back on track, and ready to graduate on time.
Anyone can get involved at the school, just call the office and they will set it up for a day.