One of the Carbon Career & Technical Institute’s goals for this school year is to improve student attendance.

Through messaging to families and students and adhering to policies and procedures, CCTI is emphasizing the importance of good attendance at school and eventually in the working world.

Because of the nature of the school, CCTI has working relationships with many business owners and leaders, employers, and human resource personnel. They consistently tell CCTI’s staff and administration that one of their top priorities is to find workers who will have good attendance.

“As a career and technical school, it is our responsibility to encourage and require students to meet standards for punctuality and attendance,” Dave Reinbold, CCTI interim administrative director, said.

Poor attendance and truancy at CCTI can lead to fines and loss of privileges. Because of excessive absenteeism, students may also experience loss of credit for the courses taken based on CCTI’s “20 Day Policy.”

CCTI has supports in place to prevent excessive absenteeism, including but not limited to, the CCTI Transition Team that meets with students to identify and eliminate barriers to success in school; Student Assistance Program; parent/family conferences; Truancy Elimination plans; individual counseling; and homebound instruction.

Last school year, CCTI had 110 students who were absent 20 or more days, some as high as 40 and 50 days absent.

“This is unacceptable for a school focused on career readiness,” Reinbold stated.

At this time, CCTI announced that it is seeing significant improvement in student attendance for this school year. To date, 11 students have 20 or more absences and no student is near 40 or 50 days out.

“Going from 110 students with 20 or more days out to 11 is a phenomenal achievement. We appreciate and thank our students and families for their efforts to work with our staff and administration to meet our attendance standards,” Reinbold said.