March Madness: Attendance Edition Live Session Highlights

Last month, our partner at Berkeley Unified School District, Director of Student Services Dr. Phillip Shelley,  joined us live to share how he is keeping the energy and attendance high through the spring months with a district-wide March Madness competition. If you missed it, read on for the highlights! 

Setting Up the Competition

Dr. Shelley led this competition in a prior role at Vallejo City USD, and this is the second year that he’s been implementing it at Berkeley USD. Having the right tools has been essential, beginning with leveraging League Lobster to quickly set up the competition. As the competition progresses, he is able to quickly pull the latest attendance data every week from the EveryDay Labs platform to find the week’s attendance winners.   While the high school has a true bracket style competition, the make-up of the elementary & middle schools make it a little tricky for all of them to participate in a true bracket style, so their performance is ranked over the month, and the winner is the school with the best attendance performance overall. 

Students and staff alike have a lot of fun with the friendly competition as they compete for a big trophy to showcase at their school. Additionally, Dr. Shelley distributes fun Berkeley swag like water bottles and stickers to keep up the energy and excitement around the competition.  

Communicating the Importance of Attendance 

Getting the word out to schools, families, and students is a critical piece of the competition’s success. Beginning in January, the district prints and sends large posters to all schools to promote the competition, and even goes to out local businesses where many hang up the poster to continue the momentum.

Getting the message out to all school leaders is equally important, which is why the district sends a weekly Monday Musings bulletin to all school administrators to highlight the competition, as well as Friday Reports to the Board that advertises the upcoming competition.  

Dr. Shelley emphasized how “getting the excitement going so that everybody’s already talking about March before March” is essential. Thanks to robust communication and the excitement of the competition, the March Madness buzz lingers through year end. Just like the NCAA March Madness that inspired it all, where promotion is critical to getting the turnout to watch a game, it’s just as important to encourage students to show up to school to win the competition (and grow academically). 

While winning March Madness is a great incentive, helping families understand why attendance matters is also critical to better attendance. Serving as one of the tools in their chronic absenteeism program, EveryDay Labs sends mail and text nudges on Berkeley’s behalf to families of students who are or are at risk of becoming chronically absent, providing personalized information about their student’s attendance, just like they would provide details on their progress in English Language Arts or Science. The EveryDay Labs Family Support Bot serves as a key communication channel: “in terms of communicating directly at any time, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, you can respond to the chat bot. It's amazing technology for us to be able to stay connected with our families. It doesn't change the work that we do,” Dr. Shelley shared, “it's an extremely helpful tool and an extremely beneficial partnership that we've had with Everyday Labs.”

Celebrating Results

Having fun is one of the main goals of March Madness, keeping spirits high so that attendance rates stay up as well. But the results translate to much more than a good time. 

Berkeley’s March Madness initiative kicked off in 2024, and showed a clear impact on attendance compared to March 2023:

• March 2023 chronic absenteeism rate: 19% 
• March 2024 chronic absenteeism rate: 16%  

March Madness served as a springboard into decreased chronic absenteeism rates past March, “like catching a second wind in a competition,” said Dr. Shelley. 

As far as the impact of the EveryDay Labs attendance nudges, 70.5% of students improved their attendance rate after receiving the nudges, and 51% of chronically absent students improved to non-chronically absent. 

We can’t wait to see the results of this year’s March Madness competition! 

Curious about partnering with EveryDay Labs to improve attendance? Reach out anytime!