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West (Hampden, Hampshire)

Northeast

Metrowest

Boston

Central

Southeast

Universal & Tier 1 Strategies:

• Across our district, we try to build resilience in our students to encourage strong attendance. We send home periodic reminders about absence protocols, including when to stay home, while encouraging attendance if symptoms are mild. When a student is absent but no notice is received, we follow up within 30 minutes of the start of the school day in order to hold families accountable, by phone or by ParentSquare direct message, by passing the family-set notifications. If we notice a student's attendance dropping (a team effort between teachers, administration, administrative assistants, and the nurse), we will hold a meeting with the family to address it head on. Attendance contracts are put in place before any more serious action takes place.

Universal & Tier 1 Strategies:

• Free breakfast and lunch to all students

• Information about when to keep student home sent to families from our health offices.

• Late bus student pick up provided for those that miss the first bus in the morning.

• Letter sent home after five absences.

• Call home from the nurse after 3 absences.

• Healthy habits, ie. handwashing, covering coughs, etc., shared with students, staff and families

• Administrators and nurses meet weekly to discuss students with multiple absences. Team works collaboratively to connect with students, families, outside providers and others to work together to improve student attendance.

• Home visits are part of the collaborative approach to absenteeism.

Universal & Tier 1 Strategies:

• We publish our attendance expectations in our school handbooks and send individualized letters home to families whose students are at risk of becoming chronically absent, reminding them of our policies and providing hard data on their student(s).

• Our schools have many greeters from across the school community at all entrances to usher the students in to school with welcoming positivity. Staff then have a pulse on who may be having a difficulty time getting in the door each day and might be able to pay special attention to those students.

• Students with CHCs have IHPs which address access to care and identify clearly when a student needs to stay home/be sent home vs. what can be done in school to keep them here.

• All health office communications to families state that families should feel free and safe to communicate directly with the nurse via phone, email, or school messaging app.

• Our school newsletters feature entries from health services about current illness trends in the buildings and list exclusionary symptoms so that families have clear criteria for when to keep their students home.

• "Frequent flyers" whom have psychosomatic complaints will get additional SE assessments by the nurse to help determine whether extra support is needed. These students are almost always taught self-management of symptoms for use in the classroom and encouraged to try these before seeking the nurse. This is often communicated to their teacher as well.

• Families who've reached out for help or whom the nurse has identified as maybe needing extra support are given contact information for local agencies or offered help in navigating the MH system for our area.

Tier 2 Strategies:

• In many of our schools, students with additional social-emotional needs are involved in planning for extra "nurse check-ins" or breaks in the health office. These may be take 1-2x per day so that they know they have an additional contact in the school when they feel overwhelmed or need a break to compose themselves.

• The nurses are all on the Wellness Committee and have the opportunity to communicate with their administration in their buildings to affect change to existing attendance policy.

• Things we'd like to improve upon are possibly doing small group health ed, or doing a health fair for our district to increase awareness for students and families and provide resources. Possibly tied in to a flu vaccine clinic?

Universal & Tier 1 Strategies:

• Positive interactions with families to gain a good report

• Provide culturally competent care

• Health education

Tier 2 Strategies:

• Frequent check-ins

Tier 3 Strategies:

• Our nurses are actively engaging with the staff in our district who implement Tier 3 strategies and are making efforts to be more involved in the implementation/decision-making surrounding these strategies.

Tier 3 Strategies:

• Working on transportation issues, food insecurities, collaborating with out of school companies to assist with getting students with behavioral issues into school.