WOODBURY — Nonnewaug assistant principal Declan Curtin was inspired to keep attendance high during the usual winter slump.  

“I had seen somewhere in the last couple of months this cool idea of doing the March Madness bracket [for attendance],” says Curtin. “So I thought we could bring it to our school and see how it goes, and I can say I’m very happy with the results so far.”

The attendance bracket is a battle among grades and Chiefs classes to earn the highest attendance from March to late April. Each Chiefs group receives a weekly percentage of average attendance, and the highest scores advanced to the final four. Throughout this challenge, attendance has made a leap of improvement from last year. 

“Things are getting better,” Curtin says. “We are 5.2% better this year than we were last year at the same time.”

Curtin’s idea was to motivate students to come to school by rewarding the winning grade level with an ice cream social. There was also an attendance bracket among Chiefs classes, and whichever class has the highest attendance during the competition period will win a pizza party.

Students appreciate the idea of a reward, although some admit it wasn’t a big thought in their mind when coming to school. 

“I feel like the ice cream social is a good initiative because we get a reward,” says freshman Bryce Gilbert, “but I kind of forgot about it and I don’t feel like it would be a deciding factor of whether I came to school or not.” 

Nonnewaug is also individually congratulating students by picking two students each week to appreciate admirable attendance.

“We have been giving it to one student who’s had good attendance the entire year, because an individual like that deserves credit,” says Curtin, “and then the other one we usually give to a student who doesn’t have the best attendance but did have the best attendance for that week.” 

Small businesses have been supporting Nonnewaug’s efforts. One standout contributor is Ayla’s Bagels and Coffee.

“Ayla’s has been very nice to us in town and getting us gift cards, and we also put all their names on Instagram to kind of promote their charity towards us,” says Curtin.

This bracket isn’t just a way to keep students in school; it is also benefiting the school’s attendance rate for the state’s Accountability Index.  

“Every year, schools get evaluated a bit by the state of Connecticut based on meeting criteria, and one of them is chronic absenteeism,” says Curtin. 

That standard is having as many students as possible under 10% of the school days missed. 

“When a student has missed 10% of school days they are considered chronically absent,” says Nonnewaug principal Mykal Kuslis.  

Through these initiatives, Nonnewaug administrators have been trying their best to keep every student out of that 10% so it has a good reflection on the school and for the students’ learning.