North Davis Junior High credits extra adults, mentoring and new routines for falling absenteeism and discipline incidents

Principal Sarissa Thompson told the Davis County School District board on March 19 that North Davis Junior High’s combination of staff-led interventions and community partnerships is producing measurable gains in attendance and behavior.

Thompson said the school serves about 925 students, 57% of whom are economically disadvantaged, with 141 multilingual learners, 175 students in special education and roughly 39% ethnically diverse students. “Our motto is strength and diversity,” Thompson said as she introduced her administrative team and the school’s support programs.

The school described a multi-tiered attendance process run by a weekly attendance committee that includes counselors, attendance secretary Sandra Owen, district attendance specialist Emily Anderson and family advocate Cassidy Bate. Staff assign AmeriCorps mentors to students, use level-1 and level-2 attendance contracts, and — when needed — offer shortened schedules or the school’s “2-to-5” program to help students reintegrate. Courtney Morgan described incentive programs such as on-time tickets and a pilot “Be There” award.

Staff said chronic absenteeism rose to roughly 40% during the COVID period and has since declined to about 20%; Thompson said the school’s goal is to return to pre-pandemic rates near 9–11%. “That level of intervention gets them to school more,” a presenter said when explaining mentor check-ins and family outreach.

Administrators also described a collaborative due-process approach for behavior issues, with binders, parent meetings and contracts to ensure consistent responses across staff. School staff reported Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO) incidents fell from 241 in 2023 to 69 through the current third term, and overall incident counts fell from 807 (2022) to 640 (2023) to 363 so far in 2024.

Thompson emphasized community partnerships and wraparound services: the school hosted a back-to-school event with 32 community partners, distributed 300 coats and 50 turkeys through partner programs, and offers on-site health clinics and connections to Family Promise of Ogden, Open Doors and the Department of Workforce Services.

Board members praised the school’s adult presence and relationship-building with students as key contributors to the improvements. One board member said the adult presence at the school is immediately noticeable and credited staff for moving the needle on student support.

The presentation gave the board a snapshot of school-level interventions and data; board members said they will follow up through liaison roles and Communities That Care work to dig into the data and support districtwide strategies.

The board then moved to the next agenda items on district safety and the SHARP survey.