District launches attendance texting and weekly early warnings

What happened

Attendance staff described new multilingual two-way texting and weekly school alerts identifying emerging absence patterns. A redesigned short-term independent-study process was planned for October.

Why it matters to families

Families can explain absences by text and staff can follow up earlier on barriers that keep students out of class.

The evidence

Staff said families can text the same school number before an absence; messages use the home language in the student system, and staff can take over conversations. Unanswered outreach is flagged after three attempts. Prior-year chronic-absence figures were still being revised, and the funding effects of recovered attendance are spread through the ADA calculation.

The source