New attendance officer at LaPorte High School

A student’s future is dependent on their attendance in high school. No matter the career, attendance is mandatory, and LPHS’s new district attendance officer, Mrs. Rain, wants to make sure that students are set on a path that will help them later in their lives.
Rain worked for the Indiana Department of Corrections for a total of 15 years before deciding that she wanted to work more one-on-one with the community, with a priority on the students.
“I wanted to work with the students and the families,” Rain said.
She jumped at the opening to work as LaPorte’s district attendance officer which means she oversees the attendance of all students in the district. This can entail calling families, running reports, and assisting families who might need help getting their kids to attend school.
Rain believes that the student is the person who decides his/her future, and Rain’s job is to just make the student accountable for it. She emphasized that students need to go to school to prepare for colleges and careers and urged students to take responsibility for the actions that could lead them down different paths in their careers.
“Trying to get someone to think about a future that they don’t even know what that looks like yet is difficult. In the last few years, we’ve heard ‘Live in the moment,’ and then we forget to look at what that looks like in five years from now,” Rain said.
Though she finds it difficult to get some students to focus on their future careers, she finds the community that has been made in LaPorte the most rewarding part of working at the high school.
After trading Michigan City blue for LaPorte orange, Rain has been a part of the LaPorte community since her son went to elementary school in LaPorte, and she feels like this is finally where she’s supposed to be.
“I feel like I’ve done everything I’ve done in my life to be here right now. I’m just really happy to be here,” Rain said.
When she’s not working at the school, she’s helping out around the community with anything her sons happen to be involved in. She does attend every practice and every game that they are a part of, and her husband coaches Maple City Baseball.
Rain hopes to further her inclusion with the community and promises to bring big changes in attendance in the LaPorte school district.