Sterling Middle School celebrates attendance win with Kona Ice treat
Kona Ice rewarded Sterling Middle School after it won all four quarters of RE-1 Valley’s attendance contest, turning attendance into a campus-wide payoff.
A school-wide Kona Ice reward gave Sterling Middle School a visible payoff for something districts often struggle to move: attendance. Students and staff got shaved ice treats Tuesday after the middle school won all four quarters of RE-1 Valley School District’s attendance contest.
The win mattered because it was sustained, not a one-time spike. Sterling Middle School had to stay consistent across the entire year to take all four quarters, a sign that the school’s attendance push held long enough to outlast the usual midyear dips that can erode class continuity and student engagement.
RE-1 Valley has been pressing the point beyond Sterling. The district launched its Attendance Matters campaign at Campbell Elementary, where students were greeted with colorful bracelets they could personalize as a reward for being at school. District officials said they plan to visit all schools with more incentives, and that the campaign will be hosted monthly.
That makes the Kona Ice visit more than a feel-good ending to the school year. It fits into a broader district strategy that uses small, visible rewards to reinforce a basic expectation: showing up matters. At Sterling Middle School, the administrative assistant and attendance contact is Erin Zuege, underscoring that attendance is treated as a daily operational priority, not just a message for assemblies or report cards. Joseph Skerjanec is the principal, William Shaver is assistant principal, and Jacob Reyes serves as the social emotional learning specialist.
The policy backdrop is larger than Logan County. The Colorado Department of Education reports attendance data at the school, district and state levels, including chronic absenteeism, truancy counts and habitual truant counts. The U.S. Department of Education defines chronic absenteeism as missing 10% or more of school, and says the rate reached about 31% in the 2021-22 school year before easing to 28% in 2022-23.
That is why a shaved ice truck on a spring day in Sterling carried more weight than a simple treat. For RE-1 Valley, the message was practical and repeatable: reward the schools that keep students coming through the door, and build that expectation into a monthly routine that other Logan County campuses could follow if they want attendance gains to stick.
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