A recent webinar hosted by Education Week and SchoolStatus highlighted attendance strategies that helped Arvin Union School District improve its attendance with a 43 percent reduction in chronic absenteeism. In the 2024–25 school year, Arvin Union SD had a chronic absenteeism rate of 15 percent. In the 2025–26 year, it’s 8.5 percent — with one elementary school lowering their rate by 60 percent.
“Every absence has a story. Arvin Union built a system to uncover it,” said Brenda Tapp, SchoolStatus senior customer success manager, who partners with the district on its attendance efforts.
Leaders from the TK-8 district in the Central Valley shared how their strategies of a welcoming culture, targeted outreach including home visits, and incentives led to the improvement.
The single biggest shift at Arvin Union SD as described by Bear Elementary School Principal Ricardo Salinas wasn’t the adoption of a tool (though they do use SchoolStatus’ attendance tool), but with a decision about what students and families see and hear as they arrive.
Like many districts and schools, they saw a huge hit to attendance after schools reopened from pandemic closures. Salinas acknowledged their attendance culture previously had been punitive, but they saw a need to communicate with families more clearly about why they should come to school. They began to have administrators greet families at the gate as they arrived, and pushed this practice down to teachers at the classroom door. Their goal was to develop a welcoming environment, but also to create a first point of contact after a child has been absent that could send the message of: you were missed, we’re glad you are back.
“The research shows that when families feel welcome rather than judged, they engage,” said Tapp. “They’re more open to having the conversations with you or open to bringing their students to school on a regular basis when they feel comfortable. It’s a culture shift that everything builds off of.”
General attendance incentives are in place using student and family feedback. The district has a monthly perfect attendance by classroom celebration and has invited parents to activities such as “Lunch on the Lawn” for middle schools, an event held a couple of times a year where parents can join their students on campus.
Arvin Union believes that attendance is everyone’s job and they include a wide array of staff and parent ambassadors in their attendance teams.
“I focus on improving attendance by connecting with the families and building those strong relationships, not only with families but also with students,” said Amelia Azpitarte, Arvin Union student success facilitator. “My job is to identify whatever challenge, barrier or problem that the student or family is facing and to find a strategy to help them.”
Personalized phone calls after an absence are one such strategy, and another is home visits. Teacher-parent home visits have made a difference in motivation for students and families. Participating teachers are compensated with a stipend, trained, and visits are always conducted in pairs, often with a parent ambassador, principal or other school support specialist. The visits also don’t have to be at the home but wherever the parent feels comfortable.
“It took a lot of work to finally gain the trust of the families. In the beginning, the parents wouldn’t even answer our phone calls. They wouldn’t answer the door. But once we started gaining their trust by letting them know we were there as a resource to them, they began to open up more,” Azpitarte said. In some instances, the visiting teams found a major source of miscommunication was that the school phone number was blocked on their cellphone, often by the student.
The district also has a family resource center that focuses on marginalized student populations such as homeless and foster youth, providing check-ins, services and resources depending on specific needs.
Parent ambassadors also play an important role in disseminating important information both ways — from school staff to parents and vice versa. Ambassadors meet once a month with student success facilitators to share information and ideas. Together, they host parent workshops, further building trust with families. As a parent ambassador, Sarai Kress provides a bridge between families who might not be comfortable speaking with administrators.
“It’s just creating those welcoming environments and really structuring how we’re communicating with our parents, having empathy interviews, being active listeners and meeting them where they are,” Kress said.
Where to begin
The district recommended three key places to start in a local educational agency’s journey to improve chronic absenteeism.
- Find the story in your data: Chronic absenteeism is predictable with patterns that can be seen in data. Attendance teams must find these patterns early on to curb absences.
- Reach the right family with the right message at the right time: Attendance improves when outreach is personal, not just frequent.
- Make showing up feel worth it, for families and students: Culture is an attendance strategy. When families feel welcome and heard, they engage. When students feel connected, they come back.
