As students across Elmore County settle into another school year, the usual signs of August are everywhere. School buses are back on neighborhood streets, classrooms are full again, and families are settling into routines built around homework, activities, practices, and early mornings. But over the past year, educators, local officials, families, and community partners in Elmore County have focused on something even more fundamental: ensuring students are actually in school. The effort has been called "Stay in the Game," and its message is intentionally simple. Attendance matters.
The initiative was formally launched on August 1, 2025, through a collaboration between the Elmore County Juvenile Court, Elmore County Board of Education, and Tallassee City Schools. Led in part by District Judge Ben Baxley, the campaign brought the issue of school attendance out of the classroom and into the broader community. The goal was not simply to talk about truancy after it became a problem. It was to encourage families and students to understand that consistent attendance is one of the most important foundations of academic success.
The campaign grew out of a very real concern. Local reporting on the initiative described truancy in Elmore County as having reached troubling levels, with more than 20 percent of the county's children absent on a given day before attendance efforts began producing improvement. The Juvenile Court increased its focus on accountability and early intervention, while school and community partners worked to reinforce the value of daily attendance. Stay in the Game became an important part of that response, shifting attention toward prevention, awareness, and making school attendance a community responsibility rather than a problem left solely to educators.
Emerald Mountain Expressway and Montgomery Expressway also stepped in to support the effort, with both locations contributing to community awareness of the Stay in the Game campaign. Their involvement helped extend the campaign's message beyond the schools and court system and reinforce the importance of attendance throughout the communities they serve. For EMX and MEX employees, participating in the campaign was another opportunity to support the families and communities they interact with every day and to help keep an important message in front of the public: students have the best opportunity to succeed when they are in school and engaged in their education.
As another school year gets underway, the challenge is to build on the progress already made. A 30 percent reduction in unexcused absences is worth celebrating, but the larger goal is creating a culture in which consistent attendance becomes the expectation from a child's earliest years through graduation. That takes educators, parents, courts, community organizations, and students themselves working toward the same goal. Elmore County's experience shows what can happen when a community decides that getting children into the classroom is everyone's business. The message remains simple, and the results are beginning to speak for themselves: Stay in the Game. Attendance matters.
