Late spring colds, allergies and asthma can keep many students home. Health providers and school nurses have an important role in ensuring students don't miss school unnecessarily because of chronic illness or lack of access to health care. This is a good time to enlist health care providers to share information about attendance during back-to-school checkups. See our tools for health providers.

Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom created an Attendance Awareness Month Campaign web page that urges schools not to forget nutrition staff when developing activities to boost attendance. The page offers tips for developing a breakfast program and urges schools to review their attendance data to identify students who are missing too many days. The Beyond Breakfast blog was developed by the School Nutrition Foundation, a member of Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom (PBIC). Find out more.

Our new report Seize the Data Opportunity in California: Using Chronic Absence to Improve Educational Outcomes, analyzes chronic absence data recently released by the California Department of Education through its DataQuest portal. Developed with the Center for Regional Change, University of California Davis, and Children Now, the report can be a model for other states because it demonstrates how publicly available chronic absence data can inform decisions about how resources can be allocated to address chronic absence in schools and counties.

An interactive data map developed by the Center for Regional Change shows the schools and counties most affected. 

This year's webinar series highlights the value of using a community-wide approach to strengthen student attendance. Our next free webinar, Team up for Attendance: Community Matters, is on August 15, 2018 11-12:30 pm (PT) / 2-3:30 pm (ET). Registration opening soon!

ICYMI, we've posted online the PowerPoint presentation and recording of the first two webinars, Leadership Matters, (3/28) and Working Together Matters (5/8). Find them on our website.

We've developed an online, interactive series of courses so you and your colleagues can learn how to improve attendance in your school. Created in partnership with TeachingReady, the Teaching Attendance Curriculum offers knowledge, guidance and resources for principals, teachers and school support staff to help you reduce chronic absences in grades K-12th. Register to access the course.

IEL's annual National Family & Community Engagement Conference July 11-13 is where school and district administrators, educators, parents and families, community partners and others come together to focus on solutions that expand engagement through family-school-community partnerships. We'll be speaking at a plenary and two workshops. Learn more.

The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading's GLR Week in Philadelphia July 23-27 is designed to accelerate learning and strengthen the connections that exist within a growing network of 360+ communities in 43 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Canada. Join us at two workshops and a concurrent Plenary on Thursday called "Reducing Chronic Absence Requires a Trauma-Informed Response". Register here.

The Attendance Awareness Month partners help spread the word about upcoming webinars, events, new publications and research in newsletters and on social media. We send updated materials every few weeks leading up to September. Find  the full list of partners here. Contact Catherine Cooney [email protected] if your organization would like to join and help spread the word about attendance.