DCSD Attendance

As we approach mid-November, the above bar graph shows where our district stands regarding chronic absenteeism. Seniors are still showing an alarmingly high percentage at 29%. Also noteworthy are the Chronic Absenteeism rates in Kindergarten and 1st grade. While this graph shows a slight improvement since last year, it still trends high, especially considering how vital positive attendance is to student success.

Attendance Concern Flag: This alert will be automatically generated when IC updates overnight and there is an entry in the SARB for initial contact, or if there is an entry in the Attendance Contact Log. Even if the SARB is inactive, historical data entered into it will still contribute to the alert being generated. Schools do have the ability to end-date the alert if they no longer consider attendance to be a concern.

Chronic Absenteeism Flag: This flag will be generated by IC when a student's Chronic Absenteeism reaches 10% or higher. The IT department is currently working on the logistics to implement this feature. When you hover over the flag, you will be able to see the percentage of chronic absenteeism for the student. The flag will disappear when the student's Chronic Absenteeism goes below 10%.

Districts often concentrate the bulk of their efforts on students with the highest absence rates. However, a recent analysis of absence patterns suggests that schools should reconsider this approach. A majority of schools (51 percent) report spending most of their absence-focused time on chronically absent students, despite those students representing less than 20 percent of all absences.

Most absences occur among students missing less than two days a month (students with absence rates less than 10 percent) and students missing two to four days per month (students with absence rates between 10 percent and 20 percent), yet these students receive little of our absence-reduction efforts. To effectively reduce absenteeism, we should shift our focus to this larger group, which represents approximately 84 percent of students. Implementing lighter-touch interventions, such as personalized family communication programs, can be highly effective for these students.

In other districts in the state, we have found that a program of repeated, personally tailored, data-informed mail and text nudges sent to parents and signed by district leaders consistently reduced chronic absenteeism districtwide by 11 percent to 15 percent. People are surprised to learn that printed mail is much more effective than digital text messages. Districts increasingly report parents complaining about “text overload,” which may contribute to why printed mail has proved so much more potent.

• Distinguished Speaker Series: CDE’s office of Health and Wellness is hosting a speaker series that has six webinars (three in October and three in the spring). Recordings are now available from the fall series.

• Back to the Classroom Executive Summary: This research paper and toolkit from the AdCouncil helps provide guidance on what messages may be most helpful to connect with parents and families.

• Anxiety and School Refusal Webinar: A webinar aimed at parents hosted by Berliner Special Education Law, a Connecticut based law firm, will provide an overview of why students may exhibit school refusal and how anxiety and mental health issues can play roles.

When the district announces a 90-minute weather delay, any attendance automatic dialers scheduled to operate before the start of the delay should not go out. For example, if you have an automated dialer set for 9:00 AM and the 90-minute delay start time for your building is 9:30 AM, the calls should not be sent. To manually run your building's calls, go to Messages > Automated Messages, then move all the way to the right and select the box with an arrow in it (RUN). This will manually initiate your calls after you have updated your building's attendance.

If you choose not to have your dialer send out calls at the pre-arranged time, go to Messages > Automated Messages and click on your message. De-select all buttons except for app/mobile, and no automated calls will be made. When you are ready for calls to resume, follow the same steps and select all the buttons. Depending on when you turn it back on, you may need to run the dialer manually, as mentioned in the first paragraph.

Just to remind you, we have transitioned to using the Attendance Contact Log within Infinite Campus for attendance intervention documentation. Please share it with any attendance staff in your building.

• IC Generated Attendance Letters

• Elementary Care and Concern Letters

• Elementary Exhibit A

• Secondary Exhibit A

• Exhibit B; All Levels

Email: lmdelapena@dcsdk12.org
Website: DCSD Attendance
Location: 373 Inverness Parkway, Englewood, CO, USA
Phone: 303-387-9636