Haverhill Promise on Campaign to Promote Good School Attendance

The grade level reading program known as Haverhill Promise is promoting good school attendance habits as a means to bolster all forms of learning.Haverhill Promise Campaign Director Jenny Arndt, who recently appeared on WHAV’s morning show, said attending every day of school is critical.“Good attendance habits, and this is something we are trying to help parents of young children understand. They start in pre-school. Start those good attendance habits right away. Don’t let your kid make excuses not to go to school because they just don’t feel like it. I don’t know if you ever missed a few days of school when you were a kid, but those days that you come back are missed learning opportunities too because you’re having to catch up from the days that you weren’t there,” she said.Arndt went on to say that tracking attendance is more than a one-person job.“Thankfully our district has these really amazing superheroes. They’re called bilingual parent liaisons, and every school has their own parent liaison that assists the attendance supervisor to make some follow up phone calls to actually call parents to find out if it was a bad internet connection, was the parent having issues with the technology helping the child join a Google Meet? Was somebody sick? What was going on? We’re very grateful in Haverhill Public Schools to have the parent liaisons. They do a lot of work behind the scenes that people don’t realize,”Arndt added.As WHAV previously reported, Haverhill Promise is in the final days of a contest to help promote school attendance and grade level Reading. Students are being asked to create a poster that includes the phrase “School Every Day, No Matter Which Way.”“All submissions need to be in by Jan. 14, so just a few more days for that. All the details can be found on our website HaverhillPromise.com and if anyone has any questions, they can feel free to reach out to our Facebook page, or shoot me an email or give us a call,” she said.Posters should be no larger than 8.5 inches wide and 11 inches tall, and must include the phrase “School every day, no matter which way.”The contest run until Jan. 14. Prizes, including a certificate and gift basket, will be awarded at each school and certificates and $100 gift cards will be given to four citywide winners. School-level winning designs will also be displayed at each school and around the city and downtown for citywide winners.Participants may either drop off, mail or email designs. Drop-offs are accepted at Haverhill Public Schools’ Parent Resource Center, 45 Fountain St.; MakeIt Haverhill, 301 Washington St; or Haverhill YMCA, 81 Winter St. Submissions may also be mailed to Haverhill Promise, 45 Fountain St., Haverhill, or photographed and emailed to [email protected] information is available online at haverhillpromise.com/postercontest.Support the show