Salem-Keizer Public Schools
Mona Smith, Native Education Program - Improving Outcomes Through TAPP
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Meet Mona Smith
Through regular check-ins, Mona Smith works with Native students to remove barriers and encourage regular attendance.
Just checking in regularly, it doesn't have to be every day, but fairly regularly to see how the kids are doing, seems to have positive effects that their attendance is going up. If all of our schools, all of our students have that one person they could check-in with I think that would just be incredibly valuable, because that's what they need. Students are relational, and they want to know that there's someone that understands their way of thinking and being.
Mona Smith, TAPP Family Advocate
Native Education Program
Improving Attendance & Outcomes
Mona is a Tribal Attendance Promising Practices (TAPP) Family Advocate within Salem-Keizer’s Native Education Program. TAPP is a grant program from the State of Oregon that is focused on supporting the needs, including improving regular attendance for Native students.
Salem-Keizer is the first urban school district to become a TAPP district. There are four schools within Salem-Keizer that are TAPP schools: McKay High School, Waldo Middle School, Four Corners Elementary, and Scott Elementary. These schools were chosen because they are within the same feeder system and had historically low attendance rates specifically for Native students.
Over the last several years, Native students across the district have struggled to reach graduation in four years, with just 68 percent of Salem-Keizer Native students graduating on time according to most recently available data from the Class of 2023. This sits below the districtwide graduation rate for the same year (2022-23) of 79 percent.
Mona’s work is a direct strategy to support the unique needs of our Native students and address one of the key challenges to student success: improving regular attendance in school.
Sense of Belonging for Native Students
One of the additional initiatives being funded by TAPP is installing murals at each of the TAPP schools. This effort is being done to help foster a sense of belonging amongst Native students, leading to improved attendance each day. The hope is to have students from each campus involved in the painting process, to help ensure students see themselves and their unique native cultures reflected in their school’s mural.
Each week we get a report emailed with student’s attendance for the week, and I just see more of the 100% attendance weeks piling up, and that feels so good. Even with some of the kiddos that we've been serving for quite some time and historically have low attendance to be getting a 100% week after week after week; It just feels so good.
Mona Smith, TAPP Family Advocate
Native Education Program
Mona is hopeful that there will be a lot of momentum this year and she will work to get systems in place to hopefully expand throughout the school district. She hopes that work she is doing for Native students will have a larger impact on all Salem-Keizer students.