The largest district in North Texas, WFISD serves the community of Wichita Falls. The district works hard to retain students and help them earn their diplomas or GEDs through credit recovery, summer school, truancy and remedial programs. Key to these efforts is the work of Attendance Coordinator Verna Honeycutt, who with RaaWee, has modernized methods and processes to intervene before it’s too late. Before purchasing their RaaWee system, “We were never current,” she says. “It was a never-ending process. There was no way to track the students in a timely manner and follow the law.”

A More Efficient Way

Before, Honeycutt would run an excessive absence report for each campus and create spreadsheets, but “as soon as I put the information into the spreadsheets, more attendance was occurring. I needed a more efficient way,” she says. She first learned of RaaWee at a conference. “I was very impressed with how they processed the data electronically, that I was trying to process by hand. They then put that data into a to-do list for each campus so that every campus knew exactly which students they needed to meet with and do the interventions. It also provided a system that did our court paperwork for us and kept a record of all contact between the campus and the student and family.” “We had a court tracking system that the district purchased. However, all it did was track court referrals, paper work, and actions. It did not track the daily attendance of the students. I asked [RaaWee CEO] Saleem [Qazi] to come to our district and do a presentation for my administrators to show them how the system worked. I then worked very hard to get the purchase approved.”

Keeping On Track

“We’re able to address attendance issues immediately, instead of a week after they occur, which helps our attendance rate and keeps students on track,” says Honeycutt. “This has made a huge difference in our attendance tracking. Our data is current at all times, it creates our court paperwork, and gives us a record of all interactions. It helps [you] be current, keeps daily attendance up to help your school’s funding, and ensures it’s correct when submitting to the state. I would recommend this program to any district.”