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Is there more data that aligns with the Attendance Works categories?

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Support in investing the relationship between teacher absenteeism and student absenteeism. As the employer, districts hold this information, but sharing it (even blindly) risks damaging teacher union relationships. Yet it does greatly impact students.

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Multi Tiered Communication Strategy to help families understand the detrimental impact of absenteeism as well as the beneficial impact of regular attendance.

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Work on creating a more universal understanding of chronic absenteeism and how it is ever evolving to use when speaking with folks who are supposed to help you create solutions.

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OR - need more on how to actively listen and know what to do with that qualitative data. Lack of training, overall, on how to use data overall and then end up at the state level with out that experience/expertise.

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Do not approach new or different solutions with a deficit mindset causing local initiatives to spend most of their meeting time with state/district folks justifying their approach against negative assumptions.

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NM - While Black students are less than 3% of the total population in the state, there needs to be a deeper understanding of the school culture and climate to identify school connectedness.

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create larger incentives that may be district wide

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gathering feedback, having expectations, and holding folks accountable

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OR - Getting mindsets into administration, school counselors, etc. - people doing this work. Also, need more time to learn from other each other, across states and districts. Need more focus/direction on adoption/implementation of strong practices.

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Seeing a webinar from SEAC on how to engage high schoolers

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incentives

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OR: To gather qualitative data, have a student relationship inventory. It has different categories (e.g., connectedness, deep caring, feedback). It helps the staff understand what the strength or disengagement is for each student. This data has been very helpful.

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MD - finding ways to get feedback from students and families; being incentive oriented across grade populations; setting expectations and enforcing accountability (using mentors to support accountability)

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Is there any data around why students are absent? Are there any trends nationally? Any data aligned with the Attendance Works categories?

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Easier way to start not in a deficit mindset. Something to read that shows the work that has already been done and then the conversation can be more focused on solutions rather than explaining the past.

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MA - Go into homes in the summer, before the year begins. Make connections and build relationships early. Have a single point of contact with the school who is 'their person' for each family.

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Washington State does pilot projects. E.g., in Takoma/Spokane. There are learning opportunities for people across the state to ask questions, get resources. This was a smart approach.

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MA - Many are reframing chronic absenteeism from a negative to a positive around student attendance. We are thinking about ways to understand root causes of challenges to regular student attendance.

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DC - develop programs based on data collection from grantees - suggestions on what will best suit their population - encourage creativity within compliance. Grantees take advantage of IT offerings to better track attendance. Also encourage grantees to track data through applications that can assist them with reporting up to the state level.

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WI - intrigued about logistics and safety around mentoring program

Mr. Jones - shared screening process for mentors; had mentors screened through raptor system; had specific parameters around what mentors could and could not do - strictly kept inside school environment and building relationships

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How can we engage other agencies to support attendance (grants, forum) to know what is happening in different areas that impact attendance? For example: Dept of Health, AHS, Transportation, Nutrition, Judiciary, and more - how can these be leveraged to support chronic absenteeism.

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Be embedded in their "worlds." Intensely learn their daily experience and how that may effect attendance before asking them to answer for attendance needs and barriers...be able to have a more informed conversation.

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CT - LEAP program focusing on visits to homes and connecting with families. Teachers have to be supported by leadership in their efforts.

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Using interpretation services, hiring bilingual parent liaisons at the school level and central office.

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MN - working over the summer to engage families and finding out what they need/barriers to attendance, and design from there, rather than making assumptions

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OR - ISF, can write for a grant. There are categories like family engagement, and there is an opp to work with an organization (like Wested) that shares evidence-based practices.

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Translating documents in the top 3 languages of our students and via different apps (e.g., Whatsapp)

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Empathy Interviews with families on the margin to determine how the system is failing to support them.

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Empathy Interviews Be Human-Centered Guide (002).pdf

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MA - Picture a child standing in the center. The first piece is family engagement. How do we make sure we provide the parents with the supports they need?

But there is also a school-based piece: professional learning for the teachers.

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VT - During COVID, districts looked at how their policies were written and then creating user-friendly documentation that could be share in newsletters, text messages, etc. That gained momentum over the last few years.

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What are we hearing themes of - coffee at the curb event to talk with parents in the morning about resources that are hitting their needs at the time. This took place every 9 weeks/quarterly. These resources were compiled based on the data that was analyzed at the school level.

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NJ - The phone call going out to students' highlighted a distinction between involvement and engagement.

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VT - very locally controlled state; current efforts to change legislation on truancy to develop some common language with better definitions on chronic absenteeism; hopes to put some specific procedures in place around absences and truancy; aligning systems

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Attendance squad and wake up calls makes sense and works for students across all grade levels

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OR - Some exemplars= some districts are doing robust community engagement with parents. Discuss barriers and how the school can help overcome the barriers. Empathy interviews have also been conducted and effective. Empathy interviews target families on the margins and tries to get at why the families aren't being served, addresses bias.

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VT has a family engagement community of practice, but its focused on school liaisons

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In IL, a state that values local control, a lot of trust is placed in districts to implement in the way they feel is best for their constituency. But for districts to have the foundation to know what their students needs and values, you get variation in approaches.

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CA - Identifying primary goal was to create a warm and inviting climate and recognizing that culture is what will enable families to open up and share was really effective.

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NJ - Many schools will use Title I for incentive items, but those are not allowable expenses.

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How can we get these ideas to be published in list format for all to see as options to learn more about? Maybe there is a way Attendance Works can have a tab on their site with all of these examples for people to learn about things that other states/LEAs/schools are doing?

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In TN, we have a partnership with Alignment Nashville that does courses for parents on district resources, this program has a big celebration for parents at the end

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CT - Education! Professional learning. Sometimes folks don't know enough about underserved populations. Sometimes provided services miss the mark because they don't know the right challenges experienced by families.

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Multilingual school liaisons - when a student knows that there is an adult in the building that cares, that has slowly increased the attendance rate

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Roll call - do this with teachers as well? Would this cross boundaries with union or the relationships with teachers?

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NJ - story about family opening up and others jumping into help - size of group likely led to success.

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Wake up calls - parent alert system. This is strategic and helps with incentives.

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NJ - so impressed by their name; their ideas have layers to them (ex. wake up call incentivized teachers, teachers include secret messages, students review and get prices, etc.)

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VT - Many schools are using technology (e.g., text messaging), so the wake up calls can also be easily incorporated. Using "fun" strategies that also involves the students was great idea.

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They need to address the root causes of absenteeism. The current approaches are necessary but not sufficient.

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Excited about the student participation. They are the ones schools want advocating for "going to school". Creating an enviorinment where children want to be.

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MA - We have focused on sense of belonging, generating a connection with a staff member, sports, or other ways.

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We have to reach out to our families, using a language they understand, to find out what their needs are and understanding of what the school provides their children every day.

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Highest level of absenteeism is at the HS level. How do we engage high schoolers without incentives that cost a lot of money?

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MI - migratory farm workers as underserved population; from state level meet with parents twice a year on state level; connect with parent leadership teams and take them back to local teams; also meet with local programs throughout the state

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Peers are powerful!

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ME - has seen success in raffles

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Earning stickers for each day of attendance. It didn't single out students with barriers for attendance.

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OR - Wake up calls were really creative and doable with the student information system. Also liked the brainstorming sessions with parents. Invited a group of parents to engage in conversation.

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NM - AttenDANCE stood out, going the extra mile by getting bicycles to demonstrate going the extra mile.

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OR - AttenDANCE is great and loved their humility about all of this. It's hard to get parents to show up when issue is attendance.

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There is a disengagement element that is not being addressed, kids really lost alot during COVID and we need to go back and diagnose causes

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The breadth of options stood out.

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Primary take away is the need to not give up. Stay committed to despite those challenges and moments of waiting.

Also incentives and strategies that resonated with their families and populations.

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Not giving up! No one came the first time, but they kept trying and found new ways

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The Wake Up Calls really stood out to me and I can take back

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The way that is was set up enforced that families need to be there

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MI - potential for wake up calls and weekly texts to work for older demographics

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All of them were interesting, simple. Wondering how to engage high schoolers.

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The reminder text/calls in the alarm system.

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Ways to incentivize families - having food, prizes, objects that families want

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VT - appreciated strategies and seemed well organized but very elementary oriented