St. Clair County School Success Plan

Overview and Need:

St. Clair County is located in a unique area compared with most counties in the state of Michigan. We are one of three Michigan counties with direct border crossings on the international boundary with Canada. St. Clair County also has two major Interstate highways traveling through its region but it also struggles economically.

Unemployment in St. Clair County has dropped to 9.4 % as of December 2013 from a peak of 14.7 in January, 2013. The state of Michigan unemployment rate in December, 2013 was 9.0% up slightly from the 8.9% in January, 2013. Meanwhile, 43.2% of all K-12 students in the county receive free or reduced priced lunches. 13.2% of county residents live at or below the poverty level and the median income is $48,869 according to the latest update from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Educationally, 27.3% of the adults in St. Clair County have earned at least a two year degree after high school. This compares to 36.4% of the adults in the state of Michigan and 38.3% nationally who have earned at least an associate’s degree after high school. The high school dropout rate in St. Clair County, as of the 2011/12 school year, the latest year available, is 7.5%, compared to 10.7% for the state of Michigan. 26.4% of St. Clair County students were reported to have more than 10 absences for the 2011/12 school year. According to the 2010 census, St. Clair County‘s population is 164,235 with only 4.1% reported to be minority, African American, Native American, Hispanic, Asian and other ethnic backgrounds.

During the 2012/13 school year 278 students were referred for attendance issues. Out of this group of students, 19 were placed on probation for truancy or incorrigibility at school while three others were placed on probation for non-school violations. Two students were placed on the consent docket while two others were placed in foster care.

Last year five parents pled guilty to truancy charges and were placed on probation with one parent serving 10 days in jail. Thirty four (34) students referred for attendance, are receiving special education services through their local school district and three students were referred to homeless support services. Thirty-seven (37) students referred for truancy left their respective district, dropped out of school or were “home schooled” by their parent.

There are several community initiatives that have been launched to address education in St. Clair County. However, they are mostly directed toward encouraging students to attend college than addressing truancy and absenteeism specifically. These initiatives include:

  • KnowHow2Go (helping students to see the opportunities they have to go to college after high school)
  • Blue Meets Green (a joint group of community business, faith based, government, non-profit and education leaders working together to address community issues. An education summit was held this fall to work on a comprehensive plan for college and career readiness.)
  • SCC Community Foundation Women’s Initiative school backpack program (distributes more than 9000 backpacks to school children prior to the start of the school year. Each backpack includes school supplies and other items)
  • Friday Backpack initiative. (Following the success of the item above, there is an effort to provide weekly backpacks of food to needy families every Friday at the end of the school week.)
  • Blue Water Middle College – a new charter school for local high school students working with St. Clair County Community College to earn an associate’s degree by the time they graduate high school.

Goals and Strategies

There are five initial goal areas the St. Clair County team is beginning to looking at as we launch this process. These are just the starting point for discussion and not the final plan to achieve.

  1. To determine who needs to be invited to the table and what their roles will be.
  2. So far courts, DHS and county truancy officer are included
  3. Education
  4. Administration
  5. Curriculum
  6. Teachers
  7. What community leaders
  8. Business
  9. Government (county, local, community, elected)
  10. Faith based
  11. Social services
  1. To begin the steps to implement a “Pathways to Potential” program through the local Department of Human Services Office.
  2. Identifying the specifics of the program
  3. Identifying a local district(s) to participate
  4. Identifying the building(s) to begin the program
  1. To gather data to determine the extent of the chronically absent and truant problem within St. Clair County.
  2. Extent of truancy
  3. Extent of chronic absences
  4. Number of expulsions/suspensions
  5. Reasons
  6. Age/grade
  7. Length of suspensions
  8. Number of repeat offenders
  9. Support for suspended/expelled students
  10. Educational
  11. Social
  12. Emotional
  1. To identify and create possible support programs to meet the needs of students and parents to address school attendance before the students/parents are placed in the court system
  2. Determine what the schools are currently doing
  3. What is available for these students that is already in the community
  4. What supports are available to the parents/family
  5. How to get students involved in existing program such as KnowHow2Go
  1. To initiate a county wide school attendance awareness campaign for the start of the 2014/15 school year.
  2. Marketing campaign to kick off 2014/15 school year
  3. Marketing campaign to keep momentum throughout school year

Next steps

A few of the team members have only met twice informally since the summit in September. The next step is to get a team more formally organized and begin the planning process. Our hope is to have a fully developed plan in place to start the 2014/15 school year. In the meantime, the county truancy officer is currently working with local districts and buildings to identify students with the most severe attendance issues and develop attendance plans to address those needs immediately. So far this school year, more than 100 students have been identified as being either truant or chronically absent and efforts are being made to address this issue with each student.

St. Clair County STTP Plan DraftPage 1