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Valley of the Sun United Way receives $475,000 grant to address chronic absenteeism in Maricopa County schools

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Valley of the Sun United receives $475,000 from Helios Foundation to address chronic absenteeism in Maricopa County Schools.

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These statistics are alarming, but chronic absence is a problem we can solve. There are effective, inexpensive strategies to tackle chronic absence that involve schools, communities and families working together.

Students miss school for many different reasons. Challenges may include the lack of consistent housing or transportation, which is a common barrier in rural communities. Family circumstances, illness, or trauma can be involved. Some students may be struggling or disengaged, with no meaningful relationships to adults in the school. Every circumstance is different and often complex.

"Chronic absence is different from truancy, which only counts unexcused absences. Effective approaches to chronic absence cultivate student and family engagement, so that families and students are not problems to be solved but are active in designing the solutions."

Hedy Chang, Attendance Works

The good news is that preventing absences also produces increases in early literacy outcomes. Data analysis showed that a 1% increase in school-level attendance rate was associated with a 1.5% increase in students passing Arizona's third grade reading assessment.

Read On Arizona has convened a statewide chronic absence task force to explore the problem and identify effective, proactive strategies to reduce rates of chronic absence in our state. Leaders from the Governor's office, school districts, state agencies, community partners, legislative staff, and education stakeholders are reviewing data, conferring with national experts from Attendance Works, and will develop recommendations and resources focused on prevention and re-engaging students and families.
Learn more about the Arizona Chronic Absence Task Force

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Attendance is significantly related to student achievement. Learn about evidence-based solutions to reduce chronic absence.

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Karen Mapp's four core values of family engagement

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Mississippi - schools rated below a certain level have a community engagement council. Membership of the council consists of stakeholders--buinesses, IHE, students 12+, faith based orgs,

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KY - learning that family input on messaging is so important

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VA: I liked how WI has an organized approach to identify truancy and school attendance in a proactive manner. Rename the roles of school so that everyone sees their role in this effort. Parental involvement is key.

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Broad reach with the justice center and community supports. Great to see and wondering how those connections were identified and facilitated.

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KY - outreach to students experiencing homelessness

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ND--Supe has student cabinent and parent engagement cabinet. The student one has been very valuable. Students shared that they come to school for "that one favorite teacher" and when teachers are stressed or when there are sub that makes students not want to go to school

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AZ - Focusing on providing guidance to local education agencies on engaging English language learners.

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TA Recommendations: HIAS PA (resettlement agency in Philadelphia); Switchboard (parent engagement programming for refugee populations)

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Grounding ourselves in the fact that these successful efforts are not overnight successes. Level-setting that when we are looking for policy change and systems, it is slow steady change.

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Learning opportunities for teachers, admin, school staff in ways to engage students and families. Focus on sub-group supports, ie: immigrant populations, multilingual populations, etc.

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OR: Alliance of Boys and Girls Clubs. I love the connection to regional events. Our state wants local control. I appreciate WI's approach. our partners at B&GC can be the bridge to identify kids that may have a reasonable excuse to miss schools, we can be a provider to assist. The PACT advocate is a good term. These folks are on the ground.

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Payors of Medicaid in Oregon getting interested in working on the subject of absenteeism as well - https://www.oregon.gov/oha/hsd/ohp/pages/coordinated-care-organizations.aspx

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Oregon Health Authority : Coordinated Care Organizations (CCO) : Oregon Health Plan : State of Oregon

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Find contact information for Oregon’s coordinated care organizations (the local health plans that serve Oregon Health Plan members).

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Happygrams to all the homeroom students--one per semester. Postcard that is positive--encourage sharing one good thing about the student. Had to be personal

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UT - working with juvenile justice system, making improvements to website for parents, other cross-collaboration at the state level

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Community Care Demonstration Project being implemented at 4 school districts in Oregon: https://www.oregon.gov/ode/students-and-family/mental-health/pages/default.aspx

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Oregon Department of Education : Strengthening Mental Health in Education : Mental Health : State of Oregon

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Landing page for ODE’s mental health work

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Strong relationship between families and school leads to pockets of success. How do you integrate the state wide initiatives into that.

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Make space for LEAs to showcase and share what they are doing

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AZ - We can model the behavior of collaboration across offices and agencies.

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MN: We don't have a social worker on state agency level, but the way WI is working we will want to hit them up for more ideas. WI is focused and work so closely with their partners.

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Adapting around transportation access - funding, connecting with public transit, private transit options.

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KY provides training to districts on how to use the state Early Warning tool, chronic absence reports, etc. to identify students in need of additional supports.

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MN - connecting schools with counties, full service community schools

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NY - We provide competitive grants for local school districts based on Dr. Karen Mapp's Dual Capacity Framework.

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Partner with special education program for a joint program. Platform for special education and presentation and collaboration with departments and get word out further.

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I would like to adapt the home visits with the leadership team as well as the transportation from the city to the families. We are a walking city so being able to offer busing for the families would be beneficial.

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State and local level informing each other in WI. We need to have the conversations on how do we move from pockets of success to systems of success?

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MN - Mirrors connecting with MTSS

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Appreciate the resources that were shared (meant for the middle column but can't move - lol)

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SSIP around graduation rates. We have COPs around juvinelle justice--we've never approached it as a dual approach. The joint presentation might open the doors for us.

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Could you share the direct link to the part you said that spoke to LEA/Community Connections?

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Have you seen any variation between rural and more urban/suburban districts when implementing these strategies?

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How is WI measuring impact and effectiveness of the strategies utilized? What are initial findings showing?

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For Julie (from the Zoom chat): Can you say more about the individual student risk assessment process to determine that student's barriers to attendance?