“I’ve been working with this district addressing truancy, chronic absenteeism, and dropout prevention for 20 years and have helped grow the policies and procedures designed to address these issues,” says Johnny Barrington, Lead Truancy Officer at Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD. 

“The system that we developed was better than nothing, but was not as comprehensive as what was needed,” he says. 

In fact, the system required a need for “time-consuming reports to figure out the who, what, and when—who needs intervention and who needs to do the intervening; what interventions are needed; and when does the intervention need to take place,” explains Barrington. 

How does RaaWee K12 answer questions for attendance specialists?

With RaaWee, all that has changed. 

“The [RaaWee system] is more efficient and provides the answers to those questions so that our assistant principals, attendance clerks, and truancy / dropout prevention specialists can dedicate their time, energy and resources to providing the interventions.” 

Barrington now sees “more consistency in regards to applying truancy prevention measures across the district.” 

How to Address Underlying Issues 

Barrington thinks RaaWee is better than the system they had been using in previous years. 

With RaaWee, “We can see real time data so that we can address the underlying issues that cause the symptom of truancy and chronic absenteeism, which can lead to dropout,” he says. 

In other words, says Barrington, “We can now focus on the causes of truancy and dropout and better find solutions to address those causes. 

An Implementation with Immediate Benefits 

“We haven’t had a full year of experience using the new system,” says Barrington, “but we’ve already received praise and gratitude from many campus administrators regarding how this system is easing their workloads.”