At Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, Principal Natalie Daniels and her team, drawing on continuous improvement practices from the CARPE College Access Collaborative, partnered with educators and community members to uncover the root causes of chronic absenteeism. The result: a powerful two-day “How to Be a Lion at King” student seminar and advisory program centered on connection, relationships, and wrap-around support to serve the whole child.
NATALIE DANIELS:
Campus connections came about as a means of better supporting our students who struggle with chronic absenteeism and we were missing a lot of our students particularly after COVID and we were looking for ways to better connect students to school to their peers and to the community here. So what we did is we ended up pulling together a small community group we pull together some of our not just teachers administrators and counselors here at school but also some of our community partners our SRO and really developed a plan where they would that would serve as a wrap around community for these kids. And what that ultimately what we landed on was developing a two-day seminar for students crash course on how to be a lion at King and all of the adults who are here to support students and really to build a network between students who were also very similar position here on campus and
VALERIA:
I get to know each other and then we’ll speak with like counselors. I think that and like we talk about like our grades and I attendance and stuff like that and other meetings and
NATALIE DANIELS:
Ultimately what we found is that after those two days where we focused on primarily day one we focus in on social emotional supports for students who are your counselors who do you go to for help what is student services where can you access information just about where your classes are we take it for granted that kids know those things and so we really wanted to create a soft landing for students so that when they came to school they feel equipped and prepared to be successful.
BRIANNA:
My attention and I realize I realize like over time like it really helped me a lot because my mom will give me like talks about like my grades and I was like really feeling down and I feel like there’s a point wasn’t laying down so campus connection really helped me to get my grades up
NATALIE DANIELS:
So we were able to take a look at our student data and what we found is after last year’s cohort. We placed all of those students into an advisory. and so those 16 students who were in an advisory, currently 75% of them have continued to improve their attendance since the spring of 2025 and 95% of them seen an improvement in their gpas in a year over year since fall 2024. So we’re seeing a lot of success we really wanted to start it again the connection the relationship building piece and then we were able to see a very clear results not just in their attendance but also in their academic outcomes and it was because we were meeting on a regular basis every other week or attendance team comes together we have conversations about the students not just the numbers but also how are things going in their classes. What medical issues might we need to address what Transportation issues might we need to address so it was really specific to each individual student as opposed to just looking at one specific metric to make friends with it too because if you’re just like alone and like it’s going to be like pretty deep like if you don’t then it could be like nerve-racking just didn’t get by yourself.
