Preparing for the 2025-26 academic year, the staff of Dorothy Lemelson S.T.E.M. Academy, a PK-5 institution in the Washoe County School District, faced one of its annual challenges: how to increase student attendance and keep those numbers consistently high to ensure the educational, social and emotional growth of its students.

For principal Susan Novelli, social worker Sean Brosius and the Lemelson staff, attendance was targeted as the primary initiative from which success could blossom. Lemelson’s attendance rate stood just below 80 percent by the end of the 2024-25 school year, with 19 percent of students considered “chronically absent” and 31 students with over 21 days absent.

“We like our kids to come every day so they become part of the school community. It’s not just about what they’re going to learn but it’s the relationships they’re going to make,” Novelli said. “It’s very hard when you’re not here consistently to keep up with your academics but then your relationships begin to be impacted as well.”

Ahead of the 2025-26 school year, the school set the ambitious goal to achieve 85 percent attendance. Staff saw students get off to a strong start towards its goal with a 95.83 attendance rate after the first month, encouraging Brosius that the new initiatives were having a positive effect.

“We looked at our numbers from last year and looked at what worked and what didn’t. We had a lot of different initiatives last year and they weren’t quite hitting home the way we wanted to,” Brosius said. “So this year we tried to pivot into how we can target certain students who we know are going to have attendance issues and really support them from day one, how can we bring families in to be part of the decision-making process, and we looked at what is something new that we can try and be done throughout the school year.”

Enter Nevada Athletics and Extra Yard For Teachers, the College Football Playoff Foundation’s platform in which teachers are given the resources necessary to prepare students for success. As part of its annual “Extra Yard For Teachers” Week in September, the foundation takes grant applications from university athletic departments around the nation with those grants then distributed from the athletic departments to local schools based on a variety of needs.

On Sept. 24, Lemelson was selected by the Wolf Pack as a recipient of a $1,000 grant to supplement its attendance initiative. The grant came in the wake of the school’s “Attendance Awareness” spirit week from September 8-12 during which a daily raffle was held for all students present, with one student's name pulled to win a prize during each lunch period. The spirit week concluded with Movie Night after school that Friday.

“We love our relationship with the University of Nevada. When the check was presented to us and the cheerleaders came and the mascot came, the cafeteria was rumbling,” Novelli said. “We’ve also had the women’s basketball team come and play basketball with the kids, we’ve had students from the engineering department come and work with engineering design processes with our children, and we’re hoping that we’ll continue to build more and more relationships with the University.”

The grant immediately bolstered the school’s initiative. Lemelson used the additional funds to enhance its weekly attendance raffle offerings with such items as soccer balls, STEM kits, age-appropriate toys and board games.

“We decided to do some attendance challenges with the grade levels, doing one with kindergarten which was extremely successful. With the support of the money that Nevada granted us, we also did attendance raffles,” Novelli said. “Sometimes we did a particular day, and they all knew, and sometimes it was random. It was a huge success. The other part was that they were very happy if their friends won. It wasn’t a big letdown if ‘I’ didn’t win but ‘my friends were winning.’”

“We were really excited to hear that we were being considered [for the grant] because now we could really up the ante for the kids and make it this big and exciting incentive that they talk about all the time,” added Brosius. “I had fifth graders who are really hard to please but they were excited and wanted to know who was winning, they wanted to win, they wanted to know what I had in the prize closet. They were just so into it.”

The school’s increased outreach to parents also paid dividends. Parents came together to form carpool groups which communicated ahead of time about needs for rides to and from school, and with the funds Lemelson was able to purchase gas cards for parents doing much of the carpooling.

“We’ve had families without any prompting from us start picking up other kids from the neighborhood to get them to school because kids are so excited to be here this year. The Extra Yard For Teachers dollars have really helped us bolster this sense of belongingness at Lemelson, which I think has been so invaluable in keeping kids here and keeping families engaged,” Brosius said. 

School administration and staff saw broad improvement in student performance, attitudes and confidence as the school year progressed. Students eagerly attended more consistently, the relationship and bond between staff and students strengthened, and respect and kindness among students soared. The recognition of the effort to attend school grew the self-esteem and self-confidence of students, which was reflected in better performance in the classroom and improved social participation.

“We definitely saw increased social-emotional growth. They were able to work better in groups, with partners in projects, and we saw that the children who had been struggling academically, once they came consistently, their knowledge of math and reading began to grow,” Novelli said.

The improvement was not just in test scores and academic metrics. Students learned the value of building good habits such as getting up on time, punctuality and respecting one another. Conflicts at recess, for example, dramatically decreased thanks in part to the familiarity and sense of community that built up thanks to students seeing each other more often.

"[Consistent attendance] is definitely community-building. But I also think it builds lifelong skills,” said Novelli. “Coming to school for our children is like going to work for adults. You may not always like it but it’s an important part of your growth. We’re teaching them habits. We’re teaching them that it’s important to be on time, important to get your work done, it’s important to get along with people.”

Lemelson concluded its school year on June 8 with a campus-wide Field Day. By the end of the 10-month school year, the school had raised its attendance rate to over 86 percent and decreased chronic absenteeism to around 11.5 percent, a significant turnaround from the year prior.

“Something that’s really clear in the research is that students who feel that they belong and have an adult who’s here that cares about them consistently come to school more,” Brosius said. “With students coming to school, they start to build relationships not only with peers but with adults. It reinforces itself over time, so then we start seeing the social growth and the academic growth that follows.”

As students and teachers waved goodbye for the summer at pickup time that afternoon, the atmosphere was filled with optimism that when the next school year resumes in approximately eight weeks, the Soaring Eagles will carry over the excitement of this year into another successful term in 2026-27.

“We love Nevada, Nevada Athletics and our relationship with them. The basketball team, the tennis team, our fifth graders last year went over to the tennis courts and participated in a clinic and they still talk to me about those things a year and a half later,” Brosius said. “We’ve been really lucky and been invited to come to the [When I Grow Up] basketball games, which the kids are always hyped up for. The kids love interacting with the college students; they love that the college students come over and care about them. There’s tangible things, then those intangibles of there are other people in the community who care about you being here, too, and that message being carried forward from the community, the neighborhood, our families and from our teachers has really come together nicely to make Lemelson a place where kids feel like they belong.”