Mexico Public Schools administrators are getting creative to battle attendance and disciplinary issues in the post-COVID-19 era.

Mexico Middle School Principal, Julie Lower, and Assistant Principal, Kyle Louder, spoke to the school board about the issues at a monthly meeting. Lower said before COVID-19 the school saw about 500 referrals each year for behavior issues but the numbers have skyrocketed since the end of the pandemic. Last year the school saw about 1,300 behavior-related referrals to the front office. 

“I don’t want to use COVID-19 as an excuse for all things wrong but it has impacted education and we know it,” Lower said. “It impacted our world, and our society, and it came down to what we are doing in schools and how we can help kids through this.”

Lower said this year teachers and administrators have put a focus on whether or not kids’ needs are being met. She said they have a goal of decreasing referrals by at least 10 percent and there is a lot of support in place.

“Any decrease from that would be golden,” Lower said.

Louder said two additional staff members have been added to the building to help meet the needs. The school has hired a social worker and a behavior interventionist.

“What we’re seeing with those two people in the building has allowed us to become much more proactive than reactive,” Louder said.

Louder said in the past it could take three or more referrals before a kid got the attention they needed. Now the social worker and interventionist are getting to the kids earlier and getting them into groups where they can get help and learn new skills. Louder said kids are learning to recognize when they are having a bad day and if necessary seeking an adult to help them come up with a plan.

The school teaches kids to lean on each other when things don’t seem right. Louder said they have started a mentoring program with sixth and seventh graders where the sixth grader is the mentee.

“The plan is to keep that for next year too and they have two years working together and then we pass that down,” Louder said.

Lower said the school is also working with kids to be more empathetic and kind to each other and it starts with the staff identifying when a kid is going through trauma. 

“When kids go through trauma and we can identify when kids go through trauma we know our kids and we’re trying to develop relationships with those kids,” Lower said. “How do you work with that kid and try to be successful despite the trauma they have been through?”

Lower said the school has put a big focus on culture. Every Monday is Kindness 101 with different topics each week that include training on bullying. Kids were surveyed at the beginning of the year about how they felt about their fellow students and how they were perceived as being treated. The kids will be surveyed again at the end of the year. Lower said culture is about how they do business, go about daily routines, and what procedures are implemented. 

“How do kids feel about coming to Mexico Middle School, how do the teachers feel about coming to Mexico Middle School to teach?” Lower said. “We are being very intentional about activities, events, and programs at the Middle School to improve culture and climate.”

Another big issue the middle school is battling is attendance numbers. Before COVID-19 the school was in the range of 85 to 95 percent of students attending at least 90 percent of their classes each year. Those numbers have dropped to between 70 and 80 percent. 

“If our kids are not at school we can’t teach them and if they’re not at school they can’t learn,” Louder said. “We are incentivizing them, rewarding them, and intervening with the ones who are chronically absent.”

Louder said one thing the school is doing is getting kids more involved in the day-to-day operations of the school to help build the culture they want. Louder said they have committees for teachers and administrators and said the same should be for the students. Louder said teachers and administrators make up about 10 percent of the building.

“We have all these committees for teachers but why can’t we have them for students? Why can’t they talk about it and then we take it to the teachers and make it more of a joint conversation to get them more involved in those conversations?” Louder said. “Why not figure out how to get those students involved in that conversation?”