What can Districts and Schools do?
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Understand the research about chronic absenteeism, which students are most often affected and how it affects them. Ensure awareness among school personnel.
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Use data from early warning prevention and intervention systems to track daily attendance and identify students who are, or are at-risk of becoming, chronically absent and intervene before they miss too much school. Designate a team of employees tasked with developing and carrying out plans to prevent pupils from becoming chronically absent. Collect existing and new data that enable answering attendance related questions, for example, (a) What is current attendance rates? (b) Which and how many students are attending and not attending? (c) When and how often are students not attending? (d) What percent of students are chronically not attending school?
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Revise discipline policies to remove punitive consequences such as suspension and expulsion for chronically absent students and implement supports for such students. Use evidence-based restorative disciplinary practices for pupils who are at risk of becoming chronically absent, being deemed truant pursuant to NRS 392.130 or being declared a habitual truant pursuant to NRS 392.14.
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Engage third-party providers and agencies-in a manner consistent with applicable State law and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)-that can provide additional support services to students who are chronically absent and to their families.
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Support and engage in community-wide, cross-sector efforts to eliminate chronic absenteeism among students within the community by addressing its underlying causes.
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Regularly communicate to all staff, students, and their families about the importance of daily attendance and the availability of any support services that can help keep students in school and on track to success.
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Acknowledge students and families that demonstrate improved attendance and use that occasion as an opportunity to reinforce the importance of daily school attendance.
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Direct instruction on skills related to greater success getting to school (e.g., transportation, sleep and eating routines, homework completion) or at school (e.g., academic study, requesting assistance, conflict management, problem solving, managing bullying and other harassment).
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Incentivize attendance (e.g., token economies, monetary incentives, social recognition).
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Increase academic supports (e.g., peer tutoring, small group and/or individual instruction, instructional accommodations).
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Use mentoring programs
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Use a Multi-tiered System of Support (MTSS), such as PBIS, for organizing a continuum of intervention supports for attendance. Develop an implementation plan that includes monitoring of student progress and responsiveness and of implementation fidelity. Develop adaptations and enhancements based on student responsiveness and implementation fidelity.
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Engage family supports (e.g., positive home-school communication, access to community resources, training on home-based strategies, school-home community behavior support planning).
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Integrate school-based mental health supports (e.g., integrated community mental health supports, interdisciplinary mental and behavioral health planning) for chronic challenges (e.g., substance use, school avoidance/phobia, juvenile delinquency, homelessness, and gang involvement).
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Identify chronic physical health supports (e.g., asthma, diabetes, obesity).