How Liberty Public School District 53 Increased Attendance by 4% in a Single School Year

Liberty experienced a sharp, pandemic-related drop in attendance in 2021 following the return to in-person classes. They wanted to use proven practices to help boost attendance and increase students’ sense of belonging at school.

Two members of Liberty’s leadership team participated in four guided EAB workshops with a cohort of peers dedicated to boosting attendance in their districts. They learned best-in-class strategies for engaging teachers and parents in addressing absenteeism, including what outreach parents should receive and when, and how to make communications as effective as possible.

Liberty developed a collaborative approach for boosting attendance by actively involving teachers, parents, and students. They established a sense of shared ownership for getting chronically absent students back into the classroom by employing tactics like setting attendance goals with students and creating mailers to share building and district-level goals for attendance. Their strategy effectively communicated the why behind the importance of attending school in-person, contributing, in only one school year, to a 4% increase in students with at least 90% attendance.