1. Attendance & Truancy Among Virginia Students
Module 3: Establishing School Attendance Teams
Welcome to Module 3 of a twelve-session series entitled Attendance and Truancy Among Virginia Students, a collaboration between the Virginia Department of Education and Attendance Works, a national and state initiative that promotes better policy and practice around school attendance. This session is entitled Establishing School Attendance Teams, and gives schools practical tips on establishing a multi-disciplinary team to manage the school’s chronic absence strategy. Please note that there is a Facilitator/Participant companion guide for each session which is located on the Virginia Department of Education Web site. The facilitator/participant companion guide allows viewers, whether working individually or in a group, to follow each session and answer reflection questions and create a working document to address the critical issues related to attendance and truancy in schools, divisions, and communities.
As the facilitator you should make sure to set the stage for the group. Thank them for being there and give them an overview for the purpose of gathering this group. Introduce yourself and your team and share with them the goal and expectations for your time together, such as the school division has determined to update its strategies for combatting absenteeism.
Introductions: For smaller groups invite each person to introduce themselves. For larger groups rather than have individual introductions you can organize groups of people by asking people to stand up based on categories such as school superintendents, the heads of student services, principal, teacher, social worker, etc. based on the appropriate categories for your school division.
For the guide
Presentation Description
Module three gives schools practical tips on establishing a multi-displinary team to manage the school’s chronic absence strategy.
Facilitation
Have the participants review the module and reflections. Each reflection is designed to help participants further their understanding and learning of key concepts, frameworks, and strategies for reducing chronic absence.

2. The Purpose
This PowerPoint serves as No. 3 in a series of modules designed to equip Virginia school divisions to reduce truancy and absenteeism.
This module provides an overview of the roles and responsibilities of an attendance team, the type of data the team should review, and suggested members.
Slide narration:
This learning module is the third in a series of modules designed to equip Virginia school divisions and schools with strategies, frameworks, materials and resources to help you to increase attendance and reduce chronic absence.
Facilitator: Review the purpose of the module with the participants.

3. Today’s Agenda Learning goals review Warm up exercise
The role and responsibilities of an attendance team
A description of data that an attendance team would review
Who should be members of an attendance team
How to involve community and families in the work
Narrative: This session will cover the roles and responsibilities of an attendance team, provide a description of data that an attendance team would review, list who should be members of an attendance team, and explain how to involve community and families in the work.
Facilitator: Review the agenda with your audience.

4. Learning Goals
Educators will learn the role and responsibilities of an attendance team.
Educators will receive a description of data that an attendance team would review.
Educators will learn how to build a multi-disciplinary attendance team.
Narrative: Educators will learn the role and responsibilities of an attendance team, receive a description of data that an attendance team would review, and learn how to build a multi-disciplinary attendance team.
Facilitator: Review the learning goals with your audience.

5. Warm Up
According to, “Analytic Culture in the US Intelligence Community” by Dr. Rob Johnson, “Successful teams have very specific organization and structure, and clearly stated goals that are shared by each team member. Effective teams have cohesion, communication, and cooperation.”
Take a moment and reflect on a team that you are part of. What are your team’s goals? How does your team communicate? Do the members cooperate with one another?
Slide narration/reflection: “Successful teams have very specific organization and structure, and clearly stated goals that are shared by each team member. Effective teams have cohesion, communication, and cooperation. Take a moment and reflect on a team that you are part of. What are your team’s goals? How does your team communicate? Do the members cooperate with one another?
Facilitator: You’ll need to decide the best way to warm up your group. Do you have people working in teams at tables? Or is the session audience style? Depending on how people are grouped in the room will determine the best way to facilitate the warm up. You’ll want people to talk among themselves and answer the three questions on the slide. Once the group has had about 10 minutes to discuss, bring them back to a full group interaction. Depending on the size of the group there are different options to report out:
For individual learners invite them to reflect on the three questions and write down a response.
If the participants are working in groups, invite each group to identify a recorder and a reporter. Have each team report their responses to each of the questions.
If there is a large group sitting audience-style, ask the participants to pair and share their responses to the questions. Invite feedback popcorn-style asking for a few responses for each question and asking the larger audience if they agree.
If possible have someone document what is shared on chart paper or white board.

6. Attendance Teams: Shifting Paradigms
Old Practice:
Reacted to lagging indicators often after many absences had added up.
Monitored only unexcused absences.
Focused on individual students and their families.
Offered punitive responses.
A mother is led away in handcuffs during a 2011 “truancy sweep” in Orange County, California.
MICHAEL GOULDING/THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, VIA ZUMA PRESS
Slide narration:
For the better part of the last 100 years, schools and education agencies have typically focused on truancy, unexcused absences. And those absences were often met with a punitive response such as suspension for the student or threats of arrests or fines for the parents. From a practice perspective, truancy is a lagging indicator that mostly focused on older youth. The results have proven that punitive responses don’t change the behavior because they don’t solve the underlying problems that are contributing to why the student is missing too much school.

7. Attendance Teams: Organizing the School Attendance Strategy
New Practice:
Goal and action oriented.
Coordinates the school’s multi-tiered strategy to reduce chronic absence.
Uses qualitative and quantitative data to understand the attendance challenges at their school.
Uses trend data to identify which sub-groups of students are most vulnerable to absenteeism.
Connects families and students to needed resources.
Monitors progress.
Slide narration:
We now know that there is a greater threat to student’s academic success, when students miss too much school for any reason. For schools to successfully address chronic absence and organize a systemic approach, they should consider taking a team approach. That can mean creating a new team or adding attendance analysis to the agenda of an existing team that is organizing tiered student support strategies. Solving the problem of chronic absence takes a multi-disciplinary team approach. The team should use both qualitative and quantitative data to understand the scope and scale of the problem and use that information to breakdown the larger problem of chronic absence into smaller solvable problems for groups and individual students. The team should be prepared to connect students and families to resources and the team should monitor it’s progress.
Reflection for this and previous slide:
List 5 things that makes a team dysfunctional. Now list 5 things that helps a team be successful.
Additional information:
What makes an effective Attendance Team? Attendance Teams are successful when they involve the right people and maintain a clear sense of purpose and responsibilities. School and district administrators should determine, based upon local conditions, if a new entity needs to be established to monitor attendance data and practice or if the work can be successfully incorporated into the responsibilities of an existing committee. For more tips refer to this handout:

8. Who Should Be on the Attendance Team?
Attendance Team Meetings should be led by the Principal and include the following members:
School social worker
Nurse
School counselor
Attendance clerk / School Secretary
Teacher (engage on an as-needed basis, related to specific students, classrooms, or grades)
District staff (engage as needed, to identify resources and partnerships)
Parent liaison (engage as needed, focus on whole school strategies for all of the students and targeted strategies for groups of students who have shared barriers to attendance)
Site-based community partners (engage as needed, focus on whole school strategies for all of the students and targeted strategies for groups of students who have shared barriers to attendance)
Slide narration: Evidence from schools that have successfully reduced chronic absence demonstrates that teams are most effective when led by the school principal. Having the principal lead the team elevates the issue across the school and helps connect the issues associated with absenteeism to other student support strategies. The most effective teams are multi-disciplinary and include the school social worker, school nurse, school counselor, the attendance clerk and being able to leverage the knowledge of other key stakeholders like teachers, parents, and community partners.

9. Tips on Involving Community Partners
Population data can be shared with community partners, e.g. grade level, demographic, and geographic data.
Community partners should be invited to meetings that are focused on schoolwide and population strategies.
Attendance team meetings can be organized to isolate discussion about individual students to the appropriate school staff.
Slide narration: Community partners are valuable resources in determining school and population strategies to reduce chronic absence. Community partners can help identify underlying causes contributing to chronic absence and can identify and contribute to the solutions addressing the root causes to chronic absence. Population data, such as the grades or groups of students most vulnerable to chronic absence, can be shared with community partners.
Reflection this and previous slide:
Think of a time that several students were experiencing a similar barrier to attendance. How could a school staff member or community partner have assisted with developing a solution to the problem?
Additional learning:
Develop Programmatic Responses to Systemic Barriers
If large numbers of students are affected by chronic absence, that suggests systemic barriers. Identifying the barriers to attendance can indicate the appropriate solutions, whether that involves establishing uniform closets, improving access to health care, launching walking school buses, providing tutoring, offering mentoring, developing morning or afterschool care and other approaches. Once you identify populations of students who are more vulnerable to chronic absnce it is important to begin examining what factors might be affecting attendance. This guide discusses how you can use quantitative and qualitative data to inform your understanding. It includes a matrix to help you analyze factors that contribute to chronic absence, as well as what assets might help in addressing the issue.

10. What Data Should the Attendance Team Review?
Quantitative data include:
Who is most likely to be chronically absent?
What are the trends?
Which grades are most affected?
Which student populations are most affected?
Who are the students who are at-risk for chronic absence based on a history of chronic absence, or some other evidence of vulnerability?
Slide narration: When assessing the root causes of chronic absence, the attendance team should seek to understand both the qualitative and quantitative underlying data. Knowing which students are most likely to be chronically absent, and what the historical trends have been, can equip the attendance team in developing strategies to remove common barriers to student attendance. The team can ask questions about the data such as which students are most likely to experience chronic absence and most likely to be vulnerable to challenges.

11. What Data Should the Attendance Team Review?
Qualitative factors include:
Why are the students chronically absent? Learn the story behind the data.
How much do excused and health-related reasons contribute to absenteeism for your school or division?
What supports and services do students and families need? Are they using the services and supports offered? Are these supports making an impact?
How much do suspensions contribute to absenteeism for your school or school division?
Slide narration: The attendance team should also explore the underlying causes to absenteeism by understanding the extent to which students are missing school due to different issues such as unmanaged chronic illness, misunderstandings about how absences or suspensions add up. Module 4 will go into greater depth about attendance data.
Reflection for this and previous slide:
Do your school student support teams currently utilize both qualitative and quantitative data? What are some of the underlying causes that contribute to absenteeism in your school? Who are the students most affected by this issue? How has your school sought to address the barriers to attendance?

12. Attendance Team: Roles and Responsibilities
Assign team member roles
Facilitator
Note taker
Agenda setter
Data coordinator
Time keeper
Slide narration: Once your attendance team is established be sure to assign roles and responsibilities to team members to help manage the data collection, review, and discussion.

13. Attendance Team Exercise
Does your school have a team that uses attendance data?
Who are the members?
Who else should be invited?
Implications?
Does the team have the right data?
Slide narration/reflection: Take a moment and consider the questions on this slide.

14. Learn More
What makes an effective Attendance Team? Attendance Teams are successful when they involve the right people and maintain a clear sense of purpose and responsibilities. School and district administrators should determine, based upon local conditions, if a new entity needs to be established to monitor attendance data and practice or if the work can be successfully incorporated into the responsibilities of an existing committee. For more tips refer to this handout:
Additional information:
What makes an effective Attendance Team? Attendance Teams are successful when they involve the right people and maintain a clear sense of purpose and responsibilities. School and district administrators should determine, based upon local conditions, if a new entity needs to be established to monitor attendance data and practice or if the work can be successfully incorporated into the responsibilities of an existing committee. For more tips refer to the resource in this slide:
Additional learning:
Develop Programmatic Responses to Systemic Barriers
If large numbers of students are affected by chronic absence, that suggests systemic barriers. Identifying the barriers to attendance can indicate the appropriate solutions, whether that involves establishing uniform closets, improving access to health care, launching walking school buses, providing tutoring, offering mentoring, developing morning or afterschool care and other approaches. Once you identify populations of students who are more vulnerable to chronic absnce it is important to begin examining what factors might be affecting attendance. This guide discusses how you can use quantitative and qualitative data to inform your understanding. It includes a matrix to help you analyze factors that contribute to chronic absence, as well as what assets might help in addressing the issue.

15. Virginia Absenteeism & Truancy Professional Development Series
1. Understanding Chronic Absenteeism
2. Frameworks for Reducing Chronic Absence
3. Establishing School Attendance Teams
4. Using Data to Drive Action
5. Messaging Attendance
6. Integrating Attendance In Parent Engagement
7. Utilizing Parent-Teacher Conferences to Talk with Families about Attendance
8. Recognizing Good and Improved Attendance
9. Providing Personalized Early Outreach
10. Identifying barriers
11. Creating opportunities for peer learning
12. Engaging Community Partners
13. State Attendance Laws and Regulations
Facilitator talking points: Thank you for taking the time to review module three. The next module in this series is module 4: Using data to drive action