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District touts ParentSquare rollout, says pilot cut chronic absenteeism nearly in half
Summary
Charlotte County Public Schools staff reported rapid adoption of ParentSquare and Focus tools, automatic translation into 60+ languages, and early Attendance Plus pilot results that dropped chronic absenteeism at a pilot school from 23.8% to 12.4%.
Miss Smith, the district communications lead, told the board the district has focused Priority Three on building two-way communication with families and launched a districtwide ParentSquare platform after a January 2025 pilot at Sally Jones Elementary. "We're reaching 99.5% of our families," Miss Smith said, and noted ParentSquare provides automatic translation for "60 plus languages" spoken in the county.
Miss Smith outlined the district's communications guide, describing how ParentSquare, Focus and PeachJar are used for different purposes: ParentSquare for quick two-way contact and translation, Focus for formal attendance and state reporting, and PeachJar for weekly flyers. She said the district can track delivery and opens and is encouraging families to install the parent app so they can set language and notification preferences.
On attendance, Miss Smith described the Attendance Plus module being piloted at several schools and showed dashboards that allow teams to assign interventions and case managers. She said one pilot school, Sally Jones, has seen chronic absenteeism fall from 23.8% in January 2025 to 12.4% in April — a 46% decrease. "This is going to be used mainly for proactive and positive communication," Miss Smith said, adding teams can see tiers of absence and message histories for targeted outreach.
Miss Smith also reported the district has 233 downloads of a Focus mobile app without a hard launch and set an internal goal of 75% parent app adoption by year-end (current: about 61%). She emphasized that parents who do not install an app still receive communications through default channels, but having the app allows families to set preferences.
The board asked whether families can see attendance tiers; staff responded families do not see tiers but can be notified if a student is "on the cusp" of chronic absence. The presentation included a short case-study video and staff said longer write-ups will be published by Education Magazines and ParentSquare.
Next steps: staff said they will continue the Attendance Plus pilot, expand training for middle-school usage, and report results at future workshops.
