The Dilemma: Build Your Own Attendance Intervention or Partner with an Expert?

As districts across the country face tightening budgets and an ESSER funding cliff, the difficult conversations around which resources should stay and which must be cut are well underway. But even as funding begins to sunset, the challenges facing school districts have still not been resolved, which is why prioritizing resources towards high impact initiatives is essential. Maximizing the amount of days that students are in school and learning is a huge component of the critical learning recovery needed post-pandemic. And while it may be tempting to take on the enormous task of absence reduction in-house, it’s worth reflecting on the costs—financial, time, and risk—when building your own attendance intervention versus working with a partner to implement this on your behalf. 

‍Are families engaged and connecting with the resources you already have in place? 

You may have already made enormous investments in curriculum, wellness services, and staffing. But when students aren’t showing up to benefit, these resources don’t amount to much. That’s why improving attendance should be one of the top priorities for your district, and this hefty initiative can’t be taken lightly. 

Chronically absent students and their families are often facing an average of 5 barriers to attendance at a time. Your district likely already has myriad resources available to mitigate these challenges. But do your families know about them? 

An effective attendance intervention works to get at the root cause of absenteeism and provides solutions to those challenges. A critical piece of this is connecting families to the right resources at the right time. And while this may seem like something team members can do all on their own, is that actually happening? In a national survey, attendance staff reported spending just 3% of their time meeting with families, but rated it the most useful communication channel for improving attendance.

Compounding this family-school disconnect, we’ve found in numerous surveys of district families that on average, 1 in 3 families do not know who to contact at their school for help. 

We know that connecting families to the district resources you’ve invested in is essential to overcoming barriers to attendance, and your attendance intervention must be able to bridge this gap. Will your communications effectively direct people to the resources they need? Will there be enough staff members available to guide them through their challenges, and does your team have the capacity to get this done?

‍Do you have the capabilities to create an effective intervention?

At first glance, it may seem that sending out family communications for better attendance is a simple task that can be handled by school-based teams. After all, it’s just about printing, texting, and distributing, right? Not quite. 

The reason why attendance interventions are effective is not only the clear and concise messaging that help families understand why attendance matters, but the personalization that makes them pay attention in the first place. Personalization doesn’t just mean popping the student’s name in a template. Research has shown over and over that families underestimate their student’s absences, and believe they’re showing up to school just as much, if not more, than their peers. By showcasing this reality in an accessible letter and text helps families level set on what is normal. When families see that their student is missing more school than their peers and missing out on critical learning opportunities, it can be a huge motivator to get into school more often.

Do you have the capabilities to put letters together with the latest attendance data that also features this essential social comparison, and send it out in a timely manner so that when it arrives it feels relevant and inspires action? 

Can your intervention keep your MTSS aligned for success?

An effective attendance intervention is crucial to keeping your attendance pyramid right side up. When proactive work isn’t done to improve attendance until students are in more severe situations, this can require even more educator time and district resources. Can you afford an ad hoc attendance intervention that may not provide enough proactive support to Tier I and Tier II students? The risk of these students falling through the cracks means even more intensive work for your team to get students back on track. 

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Additionally, comprehensive interventions provide a clear channel to viewing insights into ongoing progress, including how many communications have been sent and which resources families are requesting. These insights help inform any gaps you may have in your MTSS and where you may need to focus more for higher impact. 

Does your team have time to implement an effective attendance intervention? 

Maybe you have a superstar team that can accomplish anything they set their mind to. But the work of attendance improvement is complex, and your superstar team only has so many hours in the day. Those hours would arguably be better spent building meaningful relationships with students and families and a vibrant school culture where students want to be every day.  After all, research shows that districts with stronger family-school partnerships pre-pandemic had lower rates of absenteeism post-pandemic. 

Let’s crunch some numbers. Perhaps we’re a district of 10,000 students who would like to start sending out our own letters and texts home to families of students who are or are at risk of becoming chronically absent. Let’s assume it takes about 3 minutes to print & mail a single letter, and 2.4 minutes to send out a text message. With the volume of chronic absenteeism nudges, truancy notices, and texts you’d need to send out to proactively support students and their families, that would amount to 925 hours of printing & mailing and 2,160 hours sending text messages, which adds up to over 380 work days! Teams already have enough work on their plate. Adding more administrative work is not likely to increase morale or productivity.  

Of course, the choice is yours. Whichever way you decide, we can provide not only a proven effective intervention and truancy compliance that works on your behalf, but an MTSS attendance dashboard that helps your team work more effectively in addressing chronic absenteeism and getting students back on track for success.