1. APS TIERED APPROACH TO SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AND CONTINUOUS QUALITY IMPROVEMENT PROCESS
Thank you for coming.
Introduction of myself.
Here to ground you in the APS Tiered Approach to School Attendance and the CQI process that drives its development at your school.
Presented September 8, 2017, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the Every Day Matters: Building School-Based Plans to Reduce Chronic Absenteeism Conference

2. APS DISTRICT ATTENDANCE PROMOTION AND TRUANCY PREVENTION UNIT
Each school in the district has a staff person to support you with your efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism
District Attendance Specialists and Coordinators
Truancy Social Workers
Explain support staff – conduct introductions

3. THE BIG PICTURE and CALLS TO ACTION
90 Day Plan
The Performance Framework
Attendance
Mission: Graduate Attendance Conference
90 Day Plan – attendance goal
Attendance Teams
School CQI with strategies in each tier
Early Warning Indicators
District Supports and Messaging
Tiered Approach to School Attendance
District Attendance Specialists
Chronic Absenteeism
Calls to Action:
Attendance Team – help get one launched AND align your efforts into what the team is doing
School CQI

4. School Continuous Quality Improvement Process for Attendance
Connect with your school’s District Attendance Specialist / Truancy Social Worker.
Gather group of stakeholders and/or Attendance Team to analyze school’s strengths and needs and to garner broad support.
Ground the group and/or Attendance Team in this Continuous Quality Improvement Process and in the district’s Tiered Approach to School Attendance.
Conduct a data review to understand: scope, patterns, trends, needs and at-risk populations.
Conduct a School Attendance Assessment.
Develop a School Attendance Success Plan to include targeted strategies for each tier.
Identify and gather tools, supports and resources to support the plan.
Implement plan. Track benchmarks, course correct, celebrate progress.
Review and update plan with stakeholders annually.
Self assessment not only helps you identify where your school is around implementation of strategies for each tier, it give you concrete best practice strategies to implement. The strategies should build on each other and help your school meet objectives of each tier.

5. CONTRIBUTING FACTORS MYTHS BARRIERS AVERSION DISENGAGEMENT
Absences are only a problems if they are unexcused
Sporadic versus consecutive absences aren’t a problem
Attendance only matters in the older grades
Lack of access to health / mental health or dental care
Poor transportation
Trauma
No child care
No safe path to school
Homelessness
Conflicting work / school schedules
Child struggling academically or socially
Bullying
Ineffective or inconsistent school discipline
Family had negative school experience
Undiagnosed or unsupported disability
Lack of engaging in relevant instruction
No meaningful relationships with adults in school
Vulnerable to being with peers out of school vs. in school
Poor school climate
So even with all of our efforts, why don’t students come to school? Well, national research, which is consistent with what we are seeing in APS. It shows that the factors contributing to students not attending are themed into four common areas.

6. Contributing Factors are Different Depending on Risk
Myths, Barriers, Aversion, Disengagement
Few Students (High Risk – High Cost / Individualized Strategies)
Some Students (Medium Risk – More cost / Targeted Strategies )
All Students (Low Risk – Low cost / Universal Strategies)

7. So the district is working hard to build a framework and an array of resources and supports that will help you with your attendance efforts. We are focused on the 3 As.
In order to address the contributing factors that I spoke of and to have schools target strategies based on the needs of students, we have developed a Tiered Approach to School attendance that we started rolling out last school year.
The approach promotes strategies and provides schools with tools targeted towards all, some and few students depending on the students’ need and attendance issues.
This is a school wellness approach of developing a culture of attendance, implementing prevention, early identification, intervention and referral to community and/or school based programs, and reintegration supports. It is a systematic approach that builds school capacity in order to expand staff ability to work together to gather and interpret data; engage in problem solving; and adopt best practices to improve attendance.
Through positive outcomes arising from a grant that we have received from the United Way, we have found that in order for schools to be most successful in having an effective and comprehensive set of attendance promotion and intervention strategies that they need to establish a school attendance team. Attendance Teams play a critical role in ensuring that schools engage in a continuous quality improvement cycle in support of student attendance.

8. Tier One is focused on schools implementing strategies that ALL students in every school benefit from. The two main objectives are for schools to have access to and to use data AND for schools to develop a positive culture of attendance.
Some of the Strategies that schools can use include:
Establishing processes to make sure that student contact, registration, disenrollment and daily attendance are current and correct in SIS and that they use the data in decision making around their attendance needs and strategies.
Implementing attendance incentive programs, and
Implementing various activities to establish a pro-attendance environment and staff.
We are in a continuous process of developing Tools to support schools with their attendance efforts. One of the tools that is available to schools to support all of their attendance efforts is technical assistance and coaching from our small group of attendance staff. A couple of other Tier One tools include Guides for Accessing and Using Data to Support Attendance we that are distributing at ACE and to Data Clerks via interoffice mail and school visits, and our archive of attendance promotion messages that schools can use in their newsletters and at events.

9. ACTIVITY INSTRUCTIONS
Quickly review the Self – Assessment for Tier One.
Take a few minutes individually to reflect on what your school is already doing to ensure timely and clean data and to monitor student attendance and absences.
As a group, conduct a round robin to share strategies that are working.
HANDOUT – School Attendance Self-Assessment

10. Tier Two is focused on strategies for SOME students who are starting to have attendance issues and for targeted populations of student who have had attendance issues. The two objectives for this tier are that schools incorporate prevention strategies into their daily operations and that they implement strategies to address the issues and needs of specific populations of students.
Strategies and tools for this tier are:
Establishing a continuous quality improvement cycle by using a school self-assessment and attendance plan
Incorporating more intentional conversations around attendance at parent teacher and student led conferences using the Everyday Matters Attendance Guides that have been developed in partnership with Mission: Graduate; AND
Implementing outreach and intervention protocols

11. ACTIVITY INSTRUCTIONS
Quickly review the Self – Assessment for Tier Two.
Take a few minutes individually to reflect on what your school is already doing to conduct prevention activities and identify and support targeted populations of students who are starting to show attendance challenges.
As a group, conduct a round robin to share strategies that are working.

12. The final Tier is targeted towards students who are having attendance issues. The objectives are to provide early intervention of individual students AND the establishment of processes that support student reintegration back into the school.
Here schools implement targeted outreach, establish Student Attendance Success Plans, provide linkages to resources and supports to reduce barriers to attendance and intentionally put into place practices that help reengage and reintegrate the students into the school. Community partnerships and resources are essential to the success of this tier, as well as school staff capacity, as we find that students at this tier have an array of complex individual, family and community issues that are barriers to their attendance.
Reintegration into the School and Classrooms
Principal leadership is critical.
Focus on support and keeping student in school.
Engage students and families for Re-introduction to the classroom.
Set expectations with all parties
Coordinate between student, family and school
Develop a transition/reintegration plan (if possible/appropriate).
Establish strong and consistent communication and feedback during reintegration.
Provide flexible resources to address challenges during the transition.
Work with Teachers to support re-integration.
Engage peers to support the effort(if possible/appropriate).

13. ACTIVITY INSTRUCTIONS
Quickly review the Self – Assessment for Tier Three.
Take a few minutes individually to reflect on what your school is already doing to support early identification, intervention and reintegration of students with absenteeism.
As a group, conduct a round robin to share strategies that are working.

14. School Continuous Quality Improvement Process for Attendance
Connect with your school’s District Attendance Specialist / Truancy Social Worker.
Gather group of stakeholders and/or Attendance Team to analyze school’s strengths and needs and to garner broad support.
Ground the group and/or Attendance Team in this Continuous Quality Improvement Process and in the district’s Tiered Approach to School Attendance.
Conduct a data review to understand: scope, patterns, trends, needs and at-risk populations.
Conduct a School Attendance Assessment.
Develop a School Attendance Success Plan to include targeted strategies for each tier.
Identify and gather tools, supports and resources to support the plan.
Implement plan. Track benchmarks, course correct, celebrate progress.
Review and update plan with stakeholders annually.
Self assessment not only helps you identify where your school is around implementation of strategies for each tier, it give you concrete best practice strategies to implement. The strategies should build on each other and help your school meet objectives of each tier.
The district’s plan

15. We are here to support you!
Ron Lucero
Manager: Attendance Promotion and Truancy Prevention
Daphne Strader
Director: Coordinated School Health
Every school in the district has a person to support their efforts.