OPS reports small gains in attendance, highlights targeted improvement work

Omaha Public Schools presented data Nov. 14 showing modest districtwide improvements in attendance for the 2024–25 school year and described targeted strategies to reduce chronic absenteeism.

"During the 2024–25 school year, our district achieved a 2.1 percentage point increase," Cammie Pichota, supervisor of attendance and school support liaisons, said. She added that 1,230 more students attended at least 95% of the year and that 714 fewer students were chronically absent compared with the prior year.

Pichota outlined operational steps the district is using: daily automated outreach (calls, texts and emails), school follow-up phone calls, home visits, and an attendance dashboard enhanced by a new 'barriers' view. She said nearly 70% of absences were recorded as unverified — often short, less-than‑full‑day absences — and that the district is applying improvement science to test and measure rapid-cycle changes at school teams.

Superintendent Ray praised the work and noted the district has made the attendance program a continuing priority: "This collaborative effort fostered rapid cycles of improvement, providing a structure to a systems approach, aligned goals, aligned behaviors, and aligned processes," he said.

Board members asked for more detail on subgroup trends, what drives higher attendance among English learners and refugees, and how the district is translating dashboard data into interventions. Pichota said the district is using collaborative attendance improvement plans; as of the morning of the meeting, 3,195 students were eligible for such plans and 1,222 had completed plans.

What happens next: District staff said they will continue to track barriers, share school-level successes and expand the improvement-science approach. The presentation concluded with plans to publish analyses and communicate progress with families and staff.