District attendance advocates call chronic absenteeism a multisystem issue; outline local strategies

An attendance-advocates presentation to the Coos Bay School District 9 board laid out the district’s framing of attendance problems, school-by-school chronic-absence statistics and steps the district is taking to reduce missed days.

The presenter (the district’s attendance advocate team lead) opened by clarifying common attendance metrics: average daily attendance (a school-level daily measure), truancy (historically unexcused absence-based and compliance-focused) and chronic absenteeism (students missing 10% or more of the school year). The team explained thresholds: missing 10% of a school year (roughly 17–18 days on a ~173-day calendar) qualifies as chronic absenteeism; missing 20% or more is “severe chronic absenteeism.” The presenter said chronic absenteeism counts excused, unexcused and suspensions; school functions do not count as absences.

Attendance advocates in the district — identified in the presentation as Chad Briscoe (Marshfield), Jimmy Keller (Marshall Junior High), Anne Rodriguez (grades 3–6/ELL family outreach) and the presenter (TOP family advocate and district attendance lead) — described local practices: targeted outreach, weekly attendance huddles at some secondary sites, personalized phone calls and partnerships with community services such as ARC. The presenter said Destinations (the district’s alternative program) does not have an assigned attendance advocate but that staff there use personalized outreach and track contacts and reasons for absence.

The advocates shared first-semester chronic-absence snapshots: regular attenders (students missing under 10% of days) were below 70% across schools at semester end. The district has begun building stronger, system-level attendance teams at K–6 schools (where advocates historically were person-dependent) and is borrowing practices from the state TOP initiative to scale culturally responsive outreach. Examples of school-level interventions included weekly drawings for perfect or improved attendance, targeted meetings with behavior specialists for students close to the regular-attender threshold and early outreach by school nurses when health issues are suspected.

Ending: The advocates urged continued school-level systems building and asked the board to support staffing and community partnerships that sustain personalized outreach. They also asked for patience, noting chronic-absence is one of the hardest district-level measures to move and that even small percentage gains can require persistent effort.