Uplifting an SFUSD educator making a meaningful impact in their classroom and community.

At September is Attendance Awareness month at SFUSD, we spoke with Student and Family Services Manager Fenicia Jacks about attendance and belonging at SFUSD.

Spark: Can you tell us about your role at SFUSD?

Fenicia Jacks: I am a manager in the Student Family Services Division and I am tasked to support our focal students. In that role, I support what we call the tier three truancy support, which around the state of California is known as the Student Attendance Review Board. But here at SFUSD we call it Central Support for Truancy. Within that role, I partner with the school site team to coordinate care for students who have attendance issues, I try to figure out the barriers to their attendance, and to put interventions into place that can help alleviate whatever attendance issues they have. These can range anywhere from housing to a medical issue. There's a variety of reasons why our young people are not in school.

Spark: What are some initiatives SFUSD has taken district-wide to encourage a culture of belonging and attendance?

FJ: One of the things that we have done is really trying to up our messaging, making sure that parents are aware of their rights, and what is considered valid excused absences, and what supports we have for students. We also make sure that we are messaging the same messages across the district. Bringing restorative practices to each school is another big initiative: in our middle schools and high schools, even in our elementaries, we have wellness centers where we're very much focused on the mental and physical health of students. We are grateful and blessed in San Francisco to have counselors, social workers, and nurses at most school sites to help address those issues. We also have a robust after school program and before school program and a lot of city partners that support the culture of belonging and attendance. 

Spark: What approaches have you found most effective in encouraging students to show up consistently and feel welcomed at school?

FJ: I think the biggest approach is kindness. When we show up kind, when we are excited to see young people, it does encourage students and families to feel we genuinely care about them. One way to really encourage young people to feel welcomed at school is to ask the question: What's going on? When we individualize every situation and treat every student and family uniquely, it makes the family feel like we are here to serve them.

We also have to change the mindset of adults in schools. We have to remind ourselves as adults that this is a different generation. Our young people lived through a pandemic and have access to knowledge that we didn't have access to. We have to meet them where they're at, be open and be curious about what is going on for them. Because once we do that, we will find the intervention that works and the community group that can help. 

Spark: What message would you like to share with students who may be struggling to feel connected to schools?

FJ: I would want them to know that we are here to help. They are young people, still figuring out their life and the world around them. And we are here to help them do that. Yes, school does feel hard at times, but you can make it through this. You just gotta find a caring adult and also advocate for yourself because you deserve to have the education and the experience that you want to have. School is your ticket towards that future. Don't let the adults in your life or the things that are happening around you be a barrier to that. And I'm always here to help. 

Spark: If you have any example of a time when consistent attendance made a real difference in a student’s life or learning journey, could you please share it with us?

FJ: I like to celebrate the wins, the short term things. Recently, I was working with a social worker at an elementary school. She had identified two sisters who had not been coming to school, and she had been engaging with the parent who was very forthcoming about what they were dealing with and was really wanting the kids to be in school, but the kids weren't coming to school for a safety issue. And between me, the social worker, and the transportation department, we were able to get the kids not only on a school bus to get them to school, but we were able to work with a community-based organization to pick the girls up from their house and walk them safely to the school bus. And, you know they're going to start coming to school on Monday. And I think that's the win. 

We need to focus more on our systems and the adults need to be more responsible. A lot of the times we have to not focus so much on what the student is doing, but figure out what we can control. And I think why that situation was great is because we set up some systems to help the family move around this barrier. It's not going to change what's happening in their family, or what's going on in their world. We just gave them one thing to make it just a little bit easier. We have a lot of staff who genuinely love students and families and want to see the best for them. And they go above and beyond to make sure that we connect students to the resources that they need, without judgment.

Spark: What does showing up every day mean for a student’s future?

FJ: We have no magic ball. You know, we might have kids who we don't see every day and in 20 years from now, they might be directing our favorite movies or doing the things that we are all in awe of. But it is true that when you're not here, you can't succeed at something you're not trying at. Coming to school doesn't make it better all the time. It doesn't fix all your problems. It doesn't keep you from having to deal with paying bills and dealing with the ills of the world. It just opens doors that might be closed without an education.  

One of my favorite episodes of Abbott Elementary is when they asked the young man in the episode, about what he wants to do when he grows up and he says that he wants to be on The Price is Right. And instead of telling him you can't do that, they connect it to his education. They say, you want to spin the big wheel, you gotta go to PE. You want to be able to make an educated guess. You have to know math and you have to know science.  And so I really do think it's about us really getting to know our young people, finding out what their dreams and hopes are, even if it's the most extreme thing, and connecting what is happening in school to where they want to go. 

Spark: What gives you hope when it comes to improving student attendance and re-engaging learners?

FJ: What gives me hope is the students because they're amazing, and they remind me every day why I get up to do this work. I see their smiling faces and I see their accomplishments. I see kids that maybe a year ago we were scared that they weren't going to graduate. And then here comes June and I get to go to all the graduations and I get to see them all across the stage. The other day, I ran into a student I had when I worked for an after-school program and she told me how she was in college and how her brothers are in college. And I was thinking to myself, these are all the kids that we always say are not achieving or having a hard time coming to school, but here they are.

What gives me hope is that our kids are resilient. Our families are resilient. We are a resilient community here in San Francisco. And I genuinely believe that we are providing young people the tools that we may never get to see them use, but they will have them in their toolbox for when they are in a place to use them. When I’m an old lady in my rocking chair, I’ll get to smile knowing that out of all the adults in the world, maybe a few were once SFUSD students and that I played even a small part in their educational journey. And they're going to go off and do some amazing things. And that makes me believe the future is going to be okay. 

The other part that gives me hope is that we are focusing on attendance in a very holistic way, which I am proud of the state of California for moving away from punitive responses and being more concerned about the wellbeing of children. School is important. It is about academic attainment but it is also about students learning what it is to be a positive community member. At SFUSD, we want all kids to know that when they're not here, we miss them and that they have the right to receive the education that they deserve, and we're here to make that happen for them.