About Us
Boasting over 50 years experience in perfecting a service driven model centered on students-systems-and attendance, Pivot Attendance Solutions (PAS) is your industry approved education and training consultants.
Our Founder
Pivot Attendance solutions is an Indiana based education-focused organization designed to be an intermediary between the community and the entities serving school children. Many entities are responding to education from varied positions there has to be at least one entity piecing the puzzle together to ensure full-service, whole-child, trauma-informed, research grounded, relationship driven outcomes are possible for all students, their families and communities. The state cannot do it alone. Education partnerships must be formed for the long-term economic viability of our state. The goal then is to help the state respond to absenteeism. A long-term mission and vision of founder, Dr. Carolyn Gentle-Genitty. A visionary leader and legend in her own right, receiving accolades of Change Agent World Leader Award from the International Association for Truancy and Dropout organization, and Martin Luther King Bridge Builder Award 2021 and Inspirational Woman of the year award 2018 from Indiana University, her work in the field is well-known. Her work with adolescence has taken her from leading a YMCA as an Executive Director, writing assessment and training curriculum for UNICEF to writing policy and chairing boards focused on youth at-risk and entrepreneurship to national CARICOM research consultant conducting assessments with her school bonding instrument in Caribbean countries. She has written workplace curriculum and lead grant efforts to help at-risk students and their parents gain workplace skills with OAS (Organization of American States) and countless local organizations.
Our Advisors
Overview
Pivot Attendance Solution (PAS) is a local Indiana-based organization focused on the advancement of new and innovative attendance practices, policies, and solutions. Its number one mission is to collaborate in bringing new and innovative ways to responding to challenges of attendance in Indiana. PAS embraces a shared leadership model governed by its Advisory Board.
Charge of Advisory Board members
The primary charge of advisory board members is to advance the mission and vision of PAS, engage in outward facing aspects of the organization and its work, ensure objectivity and credibility in the workings of the organization, and advise the organization on strategic visioning and sustainability.
Term of office
Each of the eight (8) advisory board members serve a renewable 2-year term in a rotated leadership capacity. Other members added may serve for this or other stipulated times.
Membership
PAS advisory board membership comprise stakeholders (parent, student, teacher, etc.), community persons (practitioner, social worker, school resource officer, legal personnel, i.e judge or state official), and researchers/academics in various fields one must include education, data analytics, social work/psychology or related field).
Current Advisory Board Members
Community Persons
Judge Steve Nation
Retired judge Steve Nation has spent his career trying to help others, particularly children. As a founder of the Hamilton County Youth Assistance Program, Nation also gave back in his courtroom, where he spent 24 years working on a variety of cases that came through Hamilton County Superior Court 1, from mental health, adoptions and paternities to estates, contracts, torts, criminal and juvenile cases and other legal matters.
Earlier this year, Nation said he was shocked when he was recognized by Hamilton County government officials with the county’s highest honor – the Hamilton County Continental Award. He was even more shocked to learn that a trail project in the northern part of the county and Noblesville is to be named after him. Both honors were unveiled at the January 2021 State of the County address.
Family and children are popular conversation topics for Nation. He said his mother wanted him to become a social worker, which he says he tried for a couple of weeks but always went back to law.
“The first time I remember (becoming interested in law), I was like 10 years old,” Nation said. “I read a book about negotiable instruments and contracts. It was just a little paperback book, and I was sitting at a train station. Mom and dad and myself were going to visit a friend in California. I got the book from the station, and when I started reading it, it just intrigued me. I read through it the whole trip. From that point on, I loved constitutional law and various areas. Law has always intrigued me. On the other side, in college, I took political science, history and math. Those were my minors. To me, history and law are always intertwined, so I pursued my career in law. (With social work), I loved trying to help, but I also got to do that while being prosecutor and judge.”
Nation is a native of Beech Grove. He first arrived in Noblesville in 1976 after he began working in the area as a legal intern in the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office under then-prosecutor C. Donald Dawson during his last two years of law school (1974-75). From 1975 to 1977, he spent a short time working as a junior lawyer at a firm in Marion County, but in 1977, he returned to Hamilton County as a chief trial deputy. His career took off. He was elected prosecutor in 1979. He served 16 years before seeking the Superior Court 1 bench, where he served 24 years as judge.
“There are a lot of kids out there who need mentors, and there are a lot of people in our area in nursing homes that don’t have relatives anymore, so I’m working with a couple of people in a few local churches to try to bring all of that together to see how those groups of people can help each other.”
Chase Lyday
Chase Lyday is Chief of Police of the newly formed Avon Community Schools Police Department. He also serves as the President of the Indiana School Resource Officers Association and is on the Board of Directors for the National Association of School Resource Officers. Chief Lyday previously worked for the MSD of Decatur Township where he served as School Resource Officer and School Safety Coordinator overseeing substance abuse prevention strategies and special projects. He was involved in starting that district’s police department and was also a former Deputy Sheriff for Marion County Sheriff’s Office. Chief Lyday is an Indiana School Safety Specialist, Indiana Master SRO and a NASRO National Practitioner.
Todd Bess
Executive Director Indiana Association of School Principals
Dr. Bess is the Executive Director for the Indiana Association of School Principals. He has served previously as a math teacher, assistant principal, principal, and assistant superintendent. Dr. Bess earned his Bachelor of Arts from DePauw University and his Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership from Purdue University. He then attended Indiana State University, earning both his Superintendents License and his Ph.D. Dr. Bess serves as adjunct faculty for Ball State University supervising graduate students who are earning their principals license, and as affiliate faculty for Indiana State University where he instructs in the Ph.D. program.
Stakeholders
Lillian Barkes
My name is Lillian Barkes, I am a second year public school teacher in Indianapolis. I was accepted for a leadership position in my district for the 2021-2022 school year. As an educator I have first hand experience with absenteeism. There are many reasons as to why students are habitually absent, and as a gatekeeper to education it is my duty to seek understanding and be a resource to families. I graduated from IUPUI’s school of education in 2019. During my time at IUPUI I was involved with Student United Way and Project TEAM. I was a Cox Scholar and received the McCoy Excellence in Summer Service Education Award. I am the co-founder and CEO of Listen To Our Future, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to equip and empower youth to make long lasting changes in their community through education, community empowerment, and social action. I am also part of a group called CERG- Community Engaged Research Group, which was created to develop, support, and sustain community engaged research; community based participatory research; and creative activity at IUPUI. I have organized and partaken in countless events and professional development workshops focused on empowering and uplifting marginalized voices.
Maria Beattey
As a Financial Management Specialist for the Special Interest Division, I perform the
duties of a hearing official under the authority of USC 5514. I review the debt
management documents that are submitted by the debtor and or creditor. I conduct
written hearings for service members, and civilians, and consider testimony offered by
each party to make recommendations concerning the indebtedness for both military and
civilian debts. From this research and review of documents provided, I determine
whether administrative wage garnishment should continue with the United States
Department of Treasury.
Academics / Researcher
Dr. Saahoon Hong
Dr. Hong is an assistant research professor at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) School of Social Work. His current projects include program evaluation and research by utilizing the Indiana Family & Social Services Administration’s integrative data system for quality improvement initiatives. Dr. Hong’s research interests focus on equity and racial/ethnic disparity in education and behavioral health services. Over the previous 20 years Dr. Hong has led the program evaluation and research projects of the achievement gap, special education, racial/ethnic disparities, and equity in education and social work. Dr. Hong has published his articles in psychology, psychiatry, child welfare, and education journals and one of his articles about SW-PBIS has been continually recognized as one of the top downloaded articles in the journal, Psychology in the Schools, since 2017. Dr. Hong earned his doctoral degree majoring in educational psychology at the University of Minnesota in 2005.
Dr. Eric Kyere
Dr. Eric Kyere is an Assistant Professor of Social Work and Adjunct Professor of Africana Studies at the
Indiana University, IUPUI. His overall research focuses on working with communities to theorize racism, examine and identify the underlying mechanisms by which racism restrict/deny people of African descent’s access to psychosocial, educational, and societal opportunities from an evolutionary standpoint, and ways to interrupt racism and advance social justice in communities through education.
He has expertise in a variety of areas including students’ engagement, racial disparities in education and
well-being, racial-ethnic socialization, racial identity and persons of African descent’s developmental outcomes, parenting, equitable school climate, program evaluation, international social work, and human trafficking. Specific to structural racism, his research employs the history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism to engage communities and educators in meaning making process to interrogate and interrupt its continuing effects, particularly in the U.S and Africa. Dr. Kyere’s work links student’s identity to school attendance as a form of behavioral enactments that are rooted in identity verification or non-verification process. In this regard, his work takes on ecological framework to understand how students’ proximal contexts (e.g., parent-child, teacher-student, peer, and classroom) function to influence students’ attendance decision process, and ways to intervene. Dr. Kyere earned his BA in social work in 2006 from the University of Ghana, MSW in 2011 from the Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, and PhD, and Graduate Certificate in African Studies from the University of Pittsburgh in 2017.
Dr. Jasmin Graham
Dr. Jasmine Graham is an Assistant Professor of Counseling and Counselor Education. Her area of interest includes comprehensive and transformation urban school counseling, school-family-community collaboration, and the notion of Strong Black Womanhood and its broader implications for women’s education, communities, and health.
Dr. Graham has held a variety of leadership roles in counseling program leadership, development, and accreditation. Prior to her career in academia, Dr. Graham was a practicing mental health counselor specializing in school-based intervention and family development.
Our Consultants
Dr. Carolyn Gentle-Genitty
Dr. Carolyn Gentle-Genitty, founder, lead consultant, and Chief Education Officer for Pivot Attendance Solutions, has inspired many administrators, educators, students, and school social workers as a past chair of the schools concentration Masters Curriculum, tenured professor, and Director of the Bachelors for Social Work Program. Having worked closely with Indiana Department of Education to assist school counselors in acquiring a school counselor license and coordinating curriculum mapping and application, she knows the intricacies of working with school-community partnerships. She has been a forerunner in responding to school absenteeism, truancy, and social bonding. She has over 30 years in youth development, 20 years in dropout and truancy and more specifically she brings over 12 years studying, researching, presenting, and writing about absenteeism locally, nationally, and internationally. In the US she is a leader in absenteeism and understanding school attendance problems and translating such into practice models for implementation. She is forging partnerships in colleges to establish the area as a formal field of study. She is the co-founder and Vice President of the International Network for School Attendance (INSA); past president, executive board member, research chairwoman, past editor, and life-time member of the International Association for Truancy and Dropout Prevention (IATD); lead researcher for Indiana, Belize, and the Caribbean for the International Self-Reported Delinquency Survey (ISRD4), and Indiana’s representative to the national organization Network to Advance State Attendance Policies and Practices (NASAPP) under the exemplary leadership of Executive Director of Attendance Works Heady Chang.
She is the lead researcher and co-developer of the Education and Support Program offered through Warren Township as an alternative to arrest program and the author and developer of the first and only Perception of School Social Bonding (PSSB) instrument endorsed by the American Psychological Association. The assessment has been administered to over 100 Indiana schools and over 10,000 students including through the Children’s Policy and Legal Initiative of Indiana (CPLI) PSDI program on school climate assessment. She currently works closely with the Indiana Department of Education in leading transformational initiatives attendance policy adoptions. She was one of four to convene the first
world conference on absenteeism in the Leiden Netherlands with support from the Lorenz Center and conference chair and co-lead of the first world-wide conference, held in Oslo Norway bringing over 80 countries together to discuss and share research on absenteeism. Through this work her organization INSA was commissioned by the Swedish Jerring Foundation to convene world leaders to prepare the first Anthology on School Attendance Problems edited by Dr. Malin Gren-Landell. This work mimics some of that done by one of her lead truancy mentors Professor Ken Reid in a published work on attendance. A legacy profile of speaker, scholarly book author, textbook author, journal reviewer, editor, social worker, award-winner, app developer and more, she is recognized for impact on education and students. Recognized also as a Community Scholar by IU in 2017, an outstanding faculty mentor by the national organization Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and being recognized for going above and beyond with the Experience Recognition Award, Dr. Gentle-Genitty is poised to bring long-impact
innovations, in partnership with her colleagues and partners, to the field of absenteeism.
Kristen Martin, Esq
Kristen Martin is an attorney and serves as a consultant for Pivot Attendance Solutions specializing in
system navigation and development of effective alternatives to arrest and prosecution. Kristen is a
career prosecutor for nearly fifteen years and formally served as a Deputy Prosecuting Attorney for the
Marion County Prosecutor’s Office where she served as the Juvenile Community Prosecutor specializing
in crime prevention initiatives for youth and families.
Kristen formerly coordinated crime prevention efforts for youth and families and served as the liaison to
all Marion County schools. She created and managed the multi-disciplinary prevention program “Parent
Accountability to Reduce Truancy” (PART) which aims to reduce the criminal filing of educational neglect
cases involving elementary and middle school students. Kristen is additionally collaborated with Marion
County schools on alternatives to arrest and expulsion and coordination of early intervention resources.
Kristen was awarded the Truancy Champion Prosecutor of the Year in 2018 by the International
Association for Truancy and Dropout Prevention.
A lifelong resident of the state of Indiana, Kristen obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism
from the Ernie Pyle School of Journalism at Indiana University- Bloomington in 2002 and her J.D. from
Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in 2006.
Kristen formerly served as:
- Co-chair, Marion County School and Community Collaborative,
- Co-chair, Project Leadership Team Marion County Youth Assistance Program
- Member, Education Outcomes Committee, Commission on Improving the Status of Children in
Indiana - Member, Admissions Criteria Committee, Marion County Juvenile Detention Alternatives
Initiative (JDAI) - Member, Race, Equity and Inclusion Committee, Marion County Juvenile Detention
Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) - Member, Indianapolis Violence Reduction Partnership (IVRP)
- Member, Region 10 Regional Services Council, Indiana Department of Child Services
- Member, School Liaison Child Abuse Forum (Marion County)
- Member, Marion County Safe Schools Coalition
- Member, Private Education Safe Schools Commission
- Member, Marion County Youth Violence Prevention Coalition
- Member, Executive Planning Committee Young Women's Empowerment Conference
- Co-chair, School Climate and Discipline Subcommittee, Commission on Improving the Status of
Children in Indiana (2018-2020) - Member, Working Group on Poverty and Education (2016-2017)
- Member, Marion County Non-Fatal Shooting Review Working Group (2014-2016)
Community Service:
- Member, Community Advisory Board, Indianapolis Metropolitan High School
- Troop Volunteer, Girl Scouts of Central Indiana (Hamilton Southeastern Service Unit)
- Ex-officio member, Advisory Board, Women’s Fund of Central Indiana (2018)
- Member, Women’s Fund of Central Indiana OPTIONS class 17 (2017)
- Chapter Advisory Board member, Kappa Delta Sorority Sigma Upsilon Chapter Indiana
University Bloomington (2017-2018)
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