Attendance is a vital thing when it comes to school. A student can miss one day and find himself or herself an entire unit behind in a class.

So assistant principal Mrs. Cassandra Dowd and other members of the staff have decided to proactively motivate students to be at school.

Mrs. Dowd said that over the past few years, attendance has been relatively good; Bearden is one of the few area schools with a high attendance record. She said that the majority of students who do come to school aren’t the problem; it’s the group of students that decide not to come because they simply aren’t motivated enough.

The plan to get students more concerned with their attendance is to give away an array of prizes to students with perfect attendance for the entire month of November.

They are hoping to give out these prizes at lunch so other students can see their peers’ accomplishment of having perfect attendance, and the faculty is hoping that this will promote perfect attendance.

The distribution of prizes will happen through a raffle. Every student in the school with perfect attendance will be put in this raffle and the faculty will draw 20 people. The prizes will then be raffled off with the names of those 20 students. Prizes include restaurant gift cards, Bearden T-shirts, and a new set of Beats earbuds.

Students who don’t have perfect attendance won’t get a chance at winning any of these prizes, but November is not the only month prizes will be raffled off. There will be future raffles involving different qualities the faculty looks for in students.

“Stay tuned for other opportunities next semester, or even maybe this semester,” Mrs. Dowd said. “We’ll have an opportunity for something. We’ve got lots of other big prizes to give away this year.”