United Independent School District officials on Tuesday told the Board of Trustees the district’s daily attendance stood at 95.66% and total enrollment at 39,828 students, about 687 fewer than projected, and described new and ongoing efforts to raise attendance and locate missing students.

District Director of Attendance Delma Martinez said the district’s attendance officers have been “going out there and recruiting our students, getting them enrolled,” and reported the district has 216 students who are currently “no shows” that staff are trying to locate.

Martinez said the district set a one-percentage-point chronic-absence reduction goal for 2025–26 after a yearlong process that included teachers, campus and district leaders and parents, and said the target was shared with campus principals and attendance officers during July leadership meetings. She told trustees United’s attendance officers make home visits, knock on doors and try to identify barriers preventing attendance.

Martinez framed the local trend inside a wider pattern of higher chronic absenteeism since the pandemic. She cited a national average of 10.1% chronic absenteeism and said Texas’ rate is about 8.7%. The district’s goal and interventions — including a new “Give Me 5” public awareness campaign, daily campus attendance dashboards for principals, expanded PLC days for teacher planning, monetary incentives for campuses that meet attainment thresholds and partnerships with local judges on truancy prevention — are intended to reduce absences and improve instructional time.

Board members asked where unregistered students might have gone. Martinez and planning staff said many of the district’s projection shortfall numbers reflect a combination of transient students, families registering elsewhere (charter or private schools, other districts, charter schools), homeschooling withdrawals and families who have moved out of the area. Martinez said the district is buying additional withdrawal codes to better classify outflows and is tracking withdrawals every six weeks.

Trustees also counseled that principals and campuses continue to test creative incentives — from breakfast/donut incentives to on-site parades and rallies — and described a program that recognizes students with 95% attendance and seniors who have never been absent during their K–12 careers. Martinez said Give Me 5 events and high-five recruitment campaigns will start with districtwide press and campus celebrations, and that community partners including fast-food sponsors and credit unions will support student rewards.

The district also noted operational constraints: the PEIMS snapshot date in October governs official counts used for funding; students who register after the district’s “school start window” (the last Friday of September) may be counted as dropouts for that reporting period. Martinez said staff are using online registration data to forecast preschool and early-childhood cohorts and are expanding outreach to locate students before the October snapshot.

Trustees said they want regular updates. Martinez said the attendance team provides principals with daily dashboards, runs weekly site visits for procedural compliance and coordinates with discipline and dropout-prevention staff to monitor interventions.