Sometimes, it’s hard to get up in the morning, for adults and children alike. Sometimes a busy morning just doesn’t go as planned. Sometimes a child is running late and misses their school bus. For these reasons and many more, Stacey Jacobs is a positive solution at Washington Elementary School.

Jacobs is the Family Advocate for the TAPP program, which stands for Tribal Attendance Promising Practices. There are nine people in the state of Oregon doing the same job, one for each of the federally recognized tribes in the state. Jacobs is the advocate for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR). The goal of TAPP is to decrease chronic absenteeism in the American Indian/Alaska Native population, and this is the fifth year the program has operated at Washington Elementary. The school has the highest population of Native American students of schools in the Pendleton School District – 36% of the school’s 383 students.

Although focused on Native American students’ attendance, TAPP benefits the entire school by promoting and encouraging school-wide good attendance for student success. “My job is to make connections with students and their families and to help remove barriers that prevent students from being at school, which is where they learn best,” Jacobs said.

She organizes several activities, including a classroom “Every Day Matters” contest where if all students in a classroom attend every day for 15 days, they earn a treat. She has a competition between Washington’s Dens, the three hubs classrooms are clustered around in the building. Classrooms in each Den compete for a trophy for best attendance and if they earn it for three weeks in a row, they get donuts. Jacobs said already twice this school year, she has bought classroom donuts, which has rarely happened in previous years. She said this makes her so happy because it shows students want to be at school.

But TAPP is more than treats and trophies. Each school day morning, Jacobs calls every Washington student who was not reported as an excused absence. If the student can’t get to school, she drives to their house to pick them up, in a van purchased with grant funds. She talks to parents, knocks on doors, and cajoles sleepy kids to get ready. So far this year, she has given 53 rides to school.

She works on removing other barriers to school attendance, one of which is students who contract head lice, which can keep a student out for many days. On a shelf in her office are bottles of head lice treatment, which she can provide to families. Shoes, coats, backpacks, and even battery-powered alarm clocks are other items she distributes.

Sometimes Jacobs has difficult conversations with parents about why it’s so important for students to be at school on time every day. “A parent may not realize that a child who is late every day is missing math every morning, and the teacher can’t repeat that lesson. This gap in learning could really affect that child’s academic progress,” Jacobs said. She works with students to create attendance contracts and set goals, helping both children and the adult in their lives work together with her.

Jacobs said students should not miss more than one day of school a month or nine days per year for the best academic success. And that fact is what gets Jacobs out of bed every morning.