Available to all Lane students who sign up by March 1, the free program Rang will soon begin incentivising and celebrating strong attendance.

For the past month, Student Newsletters have been broadcasting the explanation, “With Rang, students earn points called “Rangs” when they arrive on time and stay for the full school day. These points can be redeemed for rewards such as gift cards, event tickets, and family activities. This program is designed to reinforce the importance of daily attendance, celebrate student effort, and make showing up every day fun and motivating for students and families.” 

Assistant Principal Joshua Dresser, who oversees attendance at Lane and acted as the point person between CPS and Lane during the process of introducing Rang to the school, said that 1,115 students had signed up as of Feb. 23, and that excitement about the program is growing.

“One of the big things for me is I want to reward the students that are already doing a great job with attendance and no one gives them a pat on the back. There’s not really anything they get other than, of course, being in school and going to amazing classes and being with their friends. But, like, there are so many students that have zero tardies, that have attendance rates over 92, 95 percent, and this just seems like an easy way for those students to really get something for all the great work that they’ve been doing,” Dresser said. “In a secondary way, if it can provide an incentive for students that are struggling with absenteeism or tardies, I would say that’s great. Anything will help.”

“18.9 percent of our student body is chronically absent, which means they have below 90 percent attendance rate,” Dresser said. “We’re on track with many of our peer schools, but it could definitely be better.” 

Senior Zoeh Olmedo Muniz said, “Honestly, I think it’s a really good strategy. Because a lot of students just feel like, ‘Oh, it’s just a regular day of class. I don’t think it’s that important.’ But if you’re giving them rewards, or just having that sort of system, that definitely will motivate them to want to get stuff.”

Attendance Clerk April Navarette said she anticipates Rang will make the most sizable impact in motivating students who aren’t already benefited by demerit or tardy reduction programs such as Goal Weeks, either because these students already have strong attendance, or do not expect to participate in eligibility required events such as school dances or I-Days. Since the Rang program will benefit all students regardless of their current eligibility status and needs, Navaette said, “Why not give this incentive to other students or anyone who wants to partake?” 

Elisa Flores, a junior who expressed interest in taking advantage of the experiential opportunities Rang provides throughout the city, said, “A lot of students really work hard. Especially with some certain classes they take, they get a lot of workload, so I think a reward would be nice for them.” 

Junior Camilo Valerio said that he thinks even showing up to school in the first place deserves recognition. “I know some people take a really long bus drive to get here or take a really long time to get here. So yeah, I think [rewards] would be important,” Valerio said.

Dresser said that being able to make this positive impact is a key motivator for sponsors such as “people that want to give money to schools, specifically CPS schools, and other businesses that want to provide or can provide very low cost services or rewards for students.” Dresser said that in a meeting with Rang founder and CEO Brian Hill, Hill explained the example that the Bulls “really like when they give away tickets. They like to see the impact of their giving on the community, like who was actually going. Did the students’ attendance improve?  Did their gift of this ticket make an impact on a student? And so that’s a compelling story for them.”

Dresser said that the program was first pitched to Lane when “CPS invited us to a meeting, RANG presented to about eight or nine high schools in the district, and they ran a pilot program.” 

“We weren’t worried that this partnership would have any kind of negative drawbacks, because this is something that CPS had already vetted and said was appropriate and something they wanted to try in schools,” Dresser said. 

Even so, to mitigate potential concerns about how student data is used and protected, Dresser said, a parent consent form must be submitted upon sign up “to make sure that student or the parents know that they’re allowing the student data to be shared with this company.”  

However, the consent form submission turned out to be one issue identified in this trial run. “There was some paperwork involved that was pretty frustrating to people,” Dresser said. “What I am told for next year is that there will be no paperwork. It will be an electronic consent form.”

Regardless, about a quarter of the student body signed up, which, considering those frustrations, Dresser said, was “pretty good for a free program.”

 “Hopefully, it’ll just provide some rewards to kids that are doing a great job anyway,” Dresser said.