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Beyond Solo Acts: How Teams Supporting Schools Orchestrate Attendance Success

Beyond Solo Acts: How Teams Supporting Schools Orchestrate Attendance Success

What if the solution to chronic absenteeism isn’t more rules, more blame, or more pressure, but more harmony?
You have probably heard the saying, "It takes a village to raise a child". But in the world of student attendance, it might be more accurate to say, "It takes an orchestra". Not just any orchestra, one where schools don’t play solo, but where every instrument, from district leaders to community agencies, hits the right note at the right time.

In education, few challenges have proven more stubborn or more consequential than student absenteeism. The instinct to address it school-by-school, case-by-case, is understandable. But as many districts have discovered, tackling absenteeism in isolation leads to inconsistent efforts, limited results, and missed opportunities for impact.

To create meaningful and lasting improvements in student attendance, it’s time to stop thinking in silos and start thinking in systems.

Attendance Improvement Requires More Than a School-Based Response

While schools are central to identifying and responding to absenteeism, they cannot do it alone. Too often, responsibility for attendance is placed solely on educators and families, while wider support structures; policy alignment, cross-agency collaboration, data integration, and professional development are missing or underutilized.

Districts and agencies that make significant progress tend to have one thing in common: interdisciplinary, coordinated teams that support schools in a structured and sustained way.

These teams, often situated within districts, municipalities, or regional authorities work across schools to provide coaching, training, data tools, policy support, and direct student and family services. They are not add-ons. They are essential infrastructure.

From Silos to Strategic Collaboration

One of the clearest barriers to attendance progress is fragmentation. In many districts, attendance data systems, intervention strategies, and communication tools don’t align either within schools or between schools and central offices. This creates inefficiencies that affect everything from how early signs are identified to how families are engaged.

Strong support teams bridge these gaps. They help schools move from isolated practices to a shared, district-wide approach. And they do so by building clarity, connection, and capacity at every level.

This shift also requires a cultural change; one that reframes attendance not just as a compliance issue, but as a reflection of student well-being, engagement, and belonging.

What Effective Support Looks Like in Practice

Districts that are seeing results in attendance improvement are doing a few things differently:

1. They embed attendance in leadership and strategy

Attendance is not treated as a standalone issue. It’s discussed regularly at leadership meetings, aligned with instructional and equity goals, and supported with clear ownership structures across teams.

2. They invest in professional development

Attendance-related training goes beyond processes. Staff are equipped to build relationships, identify root causes, and respond with culturally responsive, trauma-informed strategies.

3. They support early intervention

Through tools, protocols, and training, schools are enabled to recognize and respond to emerging attendance patterns before they become chronic.

4. They build family partnerships, not just outreach

Effective districts offer home visits, multilingual communications, liaison roles, and family-focused strategies that go deeper than reminders and policy letters.

5. They personalize pathways when needed

Support teams help schools explore creative re-engagement options, including flexible scheduling, personalized plans, and alternative education pathways for students struggling in traditional models.


Strategic Support Creates Scalable Impact

Improving attendance is not about finding the perfect toolkit, it’s about creating the right conditions. That means having the right people, policies, training, and data systems in place to respond proactively, not reactively.

Teams Supporting Schools (TSS) play a central role in helping schools translate guidance into action, scale what works, and learn from what doesn’t. And critically, they ensure that no school is left to figure it out on its own.

In short, attendance improvement isn’t a solo act. It’s a coordinated performance.

The more harmonized the effort, the stronger the outcomes.

Dr. David Heyne, PhD

Dr. DAVID HEYNE, PHD

With over 30 years of experience in the field of school attendance, Dr. David Heyne brings diverse expertise spanning practical, research, and scholarly work. He is co-founder and executive team member of INSA (the International Network for School Attendance), co-founder of the KNSA (Dutch Knowledge Network for School Attendance), and offers freelance services through Excellence in Attendance Support, actively collaborating with professionals to make a positive impact on school attendance and young people’s relationship with education and well-being.

Currently serving as Honorary Associate Professor at Deakin University in Australia, David’s academic journey includes roles at the University of Melbourne and Monash University in Australia, and more recently, at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Dr. Carolyn Gentle-Gennity, PhD, Butler University
Dr. Carolyn Gentle-Genitty

Dr. CAROLYN GENTLE-GENITTY, PHD

Dr. Carolyn Gentle-Genitty is a social work scholar, youth advocate, and higher education leader with over 25 years of experience. She holds a PhD in Social Work from Indiana University, where her research focused on truancy and school social bonding.

She currently serves as the inaugural dean of Founder’s College at Butler University, a program dedicated to expanding access to higher education. A former Assistant Vice President at Indiana University, Dr. Gentle-Genitty is also the founder of Attendance USA and a prolific researcher with expertise in school attendance and academic policy.

Her work continues to influence policy, research, and practice in education and youth development.

Recent Posts

  • Attendance Works Toolkits and Resources Review 2024-25
  • Guess Less, Know More: Turning Attendance Data into Real Student Support
  • Beyond Solo Acts: How Teams Supporting Schools Orchestrate Attendance Success
  • The Essential School Attendance Team: Weaving Success for Every Student
  • Every Day Matters in Duncanville ISD: The Tale of 2 Attendance Models
OUR MISSION

RaaWee K12 Solutions, solely focused on the challenges of Chronic Absenteeism and Truancy for more than 10 years, provides RaaWee K12 Attendance+ to educational institutions and their leaders for foolproof tracking, simplified outreach, timely 2-way communication, barrier-solving collaboration, simplified document preparation, powerful data analysis, and centralized storage tools that result in successful Student Attendance Improvement.

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OUR MISSION

RaaWee Attendance+ (also known as RaaWee K12 Truancy & Dropout Prevention System (TDPS)), is a comprehensive collaboration platform, that implements student attendance and participation improvement strategies. The most robust and scalable platform provides school districts with essential best practices and robust tools for preventing chronic absenteeism and truancy, regardless of the District’s education delivery model – Online, At-School Learning, or Hybrid.

SOLUTIONS

  • RAAWEE ATTENDANCE+
  • MILOGs

DISTRICT PARTNERS

  • PARTNER LIST
  • TESTIMONIALS
  • CASE STUDIES

BEST PRACTICES

  • PREVENTING CHRONIC ABSENTEEISM
  • ACHIEVING ATTENDANCE IMPROVEMENT
  • PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

VIRTUAL EVENTS

  • EVERYDAY MATTERS SUMMIT

RESOURCES

  • WHITE PAPERS
  • VIDEOS
  • NEWS & BLOGS
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Dr. Carolyn Gentle-Genitty

Dr. Carolyn Gentle-Genitty, founder, lead consultant, and Chief Education Officer for Pivot Attendance Solutions, has inspired many administrators, educators, students, and school social workers as a past chair of the school’s concentration Masters Curriculum, tenured professor, and Director of the Bachelors for Social Work Program. Having worked closely with Indiana Department of Education to assist school counselors in acquiring a school counselor license and coordinating curriculum mapping and application, she knows the intricacies of working with school-community partnerships. She has been a forerunner in responding to school absenteeism, truancy, and social bonding. She has over 30 years in youth development, 20 years in dropout and truancy and more specifically she brings over 12 years studying, researching, presenting, and writing about absenteeism locally, nationally, and internationally. In the US she is a leader in absenteeism and understanding school attendance problems and translating such into practice models for implementation. She is forging partnerships in colleges to establish the area as a formal field of study.

Dr. Kim Wallace

Dr. Kim Wallace, professional education consultant with Process Makes Perfect, and author of Leading the Launch, published by Solution Tree in September 2021, outlines a field-tested ten-stage process for successfully vetting and sustaining new initiatives in schools and districts. Dr. Wallace’s book shares a developed structure to regulate programs, protocols, and adoptions districtwide. This process was the result of her career in public education of almost three decades, starting as a high school teacher and instructional coach before moving into site administration. After earning her doctorate from UC Davis in 2012, Kim was promoted to Director of Instructional Technology in Davis, CA and then Assistant Superintendent of Instruction in Fremont, CA. In 2017, she became the superintendent of Fremont Unified—one of the top twenty largest districts in California—where Kim discovered a true passion for creating systems to navigate organizational progress. A deft strategist and expert who has served in four diverse districts, Dr. Wallace believes that her “personal and professional purpose is helping educators (re)claim their power to positively transform our schools and districts from the inside out.”

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