School Site Prevention and Intervention Strategies

Students learn when they are in school and engaged in the classroom. When they are absent for any reason, they miss out on opportunities to learn. There are many factors causing children to miss school. These may stem from situations inside or outside of school. It is helpful to group the causes of absence into four categories: barriers, negative school experiences, lack of engagement, and misconceptions. The conditions that contribute to students missing school are often linked to factors that lead to behavioral challenges.

At the school level, particularly in schools where there is a significant level of absenteeism (over 10 percent), a team is needed to organize the schools’ strategy to foster improved attendance for all students. Given that the conditions contributing to poor attendance are often linked to what creates behavioral challenges, schools should consider creating a team that addresses both.

The primary purpose of a school attendance and behavioral intervention team is to organize the school’s strategy to foster improved attendance and behavior for all students.

Essentially the attendance and behavior intervention team coordinate, assess, and prioritize. The specific functions include:

• Monitor data trends. See who is most affected and whether the data (chronic absence and suspensions) are getting better or worse. Use school data to set school wide and student subgroup goals for attendance and behavioral improvement.
  
  
• Examine causes of chronic absenteeism and behavioral challenges using both qualitative and quantitative data.
  
  
• Coordinate implementation of the school’s multi-tiered strategy by engaging the entire school community in developing and supporting a comprehensive strategy that begins with prevention and early intervention. Reducing chronic absence and behavioral challenges begins with evidence-based prevention and early intervention strategies that involve the whole school community.
  
  
• Ensure chronically absent students and those with behavioral challenges receive needed support from both the school and the community.

School Attendance and Behavior Intervention Team Composition
Organizing Tier 1 Universal Prevention Strategies
Ensuring Early Intervention—Tier 2 Strategies
Examples of School Attendance Review Team Meeting Strategies and Best Practices

School Attendance and Behavior Intervention Team Composition

The most effective school attendance and behavior intervention teams are cross-functional and leverage the knowledge of key stakeholders including students, families, school staff (including teachers), and community partners. Teams should have three or more people in membership. Depending on the school’s resources, the team might include: the school nurse, social worker, guidance counselor, attendance clerk/secretary, school climate coordinator, attendance or truancy officer, parent/family liaison, individualized education program (IEP) coordinator, family resource staff, and district staff as appropriate. Teams may also include teachers or lead teachers for grade cohorts. Minimally, there should be a process for teachers to provide their perspective on reasons why students are absent or not behaving appropriately.

Core roles can include a team leader, meeting facilitator, data coordinator, and note taker. Note that these are roles that may be combined. For example, the data coordinator may also serve as the note taker. All team members should have access to a common system that monitors student outcomes, records interactions and interventions, and tracks progress on agreed upon tasks.

Implementing a tiered approach to attendance and behavior is consistent with other efforts to provide student support such as Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) or Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) and can be extremely beneficial at the school site. Tier 1 should involve universal strategies that are appropriate for all students and serve to ensure the school and classroom is a place where both students and families feel welcome. These strategies utilized by teachers and other school staff have the potential to have a positive impact on student attendance.

While everyone can help ensure students show up to class every day, the leadership role of a principal is key. Principals are uniquely positioned to ensure their school community adopts a comprehensive, tiered approach to improving attendance that fits with their overall goal of promoting academic achievement. It is up to the principal to determine if it makes more sense to create a separate attendance team or integrate its functions with an existing team. The attendance functions may be combined with a PBIS team that is working on behavior and school climate, or with an MTSS team that is aligning support for academics, behavior, and social emotional learning. The “right” answer for a particular school depends on many factors including the size of the school, how well its teams are functioning, the level of absenteeism it is addressing, the capacity of school leaders, and guidance from the district.

Avoid these common team pitfalls, which will result in very little reduction in overall chronic absenteeism:

• Focusing only on the students with most absences
• Relying on case management as the sole strategy
• Assigning the responsibility to too small a team
• Failing to rally whole school to support prevention and early intervention strategies

Return to Top

Organizing Tier 1 Universal Prevention Strategies

You may have heard the saying, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” When educators invest in universal prevention strategies, they reduce the need for interventions before the first absence or disciplinary referral occurs.

Examples of Tier I Strategies

• Ensure the classroom and school climate is safe and supportive for all students. Establish a school climate message that the school is a learning community, and every person at school is a member of this community. All community members need to support and not undermine everyone’s opportunity to engage, focus, learn, and contribute to each other’s learning.
  
  
• Create engaging classroom environments.
  
  
• Have high expectations for students to attend school every day and communicate this message to students and families.
  
  
• Publicize and celebrate National Attendance Awareness Month every September.
  
  
• Find examples from Model School Attendance Review Boards of exemplary attendance awareness messaging, and positive interventions for addressing absenteeism and behavioral challenges.
  
  
• Share key messages with parents regarding the relationship between attendance and achievement.
  
  
• Regularly monitor daily attendance and note students who are missing school for any reason. Also monitor referrals for behavioral interventions. Look for patterns for this student and among students. This should be a weekly process.
  
  
• Recognize good and improved attendance and/or behavior.
  
  
• Provide school-based health support.

Address Misunderstandings and Reset Baselines

Per California Education Code (EC) Section 48260.5 , schools are required to send First Notice of Truancy. These letters are an important alert to families and the First Notice of Truancy occurs upon a student’s initial classification as a truant. Other notices may be sent out upon a student’s initial classification as a chronic absentee.

Similarly, the attendance team has the option to send excessive absence letters when students’ total absences begin to add up beyond ten percent. Letters to parents about students with high or very high chronic absenteeism rates are not mandated by state law. They are often written to underscore concern and support. Notices deeming a student as a habitual truant should note possible referral to a school attendance review board and possible legal recourse, but intensive interventions are to be taken only if other means of support and correction have not been successful at the school level.

Return to Top

Ensuring Early Intervention—Tier 2 Strategies

When students begin missing school and/or experience behavioral challenges, early intervention is critical. For absenteeism, the first step in this process is to ensure that student attendance data, including all absences, whether they are due to excused absences, unexcused absences or days missed due to suspensions, is routinely tracked and reviewed by school site personnel. For behavioral challenges, the first step is to understand the situation from the point of view of the impact on the learning community and from the perspective of the individual student.

Notice when a student does not attend or behave appropriately and attempt to find out the reason. Start with asking the student. This shows that you begin with care and respect for them, not blame. Similarly, talk with the student’s parent/guardian.

These conversations may begin informally. If a more formal approach is needed, consider setting up a conference, conducting a home visit or holding a Student Success Team (SST) or Student Attendance Review Team (SART) meeting to learn what is happening.

The sooner educators can identify the causes of absences or behavioral issues and organize developmentally focused responses to these challenges, the fewer interruptions and barriers there will be on students’ paths to a successful future.

When students begin to exhibit signs of chronic absenteeism, which can be as few as two days per month, school staff should check in with the parent/guardian to find out the reason. Staff may also identify other key adults in the student’s life who care about them. This contact should be personal and positive and should include an offer to assist in addressing barriers and providing connections to appropriate support. At this stage, it may be appropriate to set up a SST or a SART at the site level to involve relevant personnel who may be able to help identify and diagnose issues and/or provide suggestions and assistance. Collaborating with community partners and agencies can be extremely helpful for schools to expand their access to resources.

When students are having behavior challenges, school staff should view suspensions as an extreme response after other means of correction have been identified and implemented. Suspensions cut off the student’s access to educators who have the professional knowledge, skills, and abilities to work with the student to overcome behavioral barriers. Accordingly, school sites should create meaningful alternatives to suspension. EC Section 48900.5 identifies an extensive list of positive intervention approaches to use instead of excluding a student from school. The goal is always to have the student learning in the classroom. This means supporting a student to regroup and return to successful learning as soon as possible. It also involves restorative justice approaches to assist students in identifying the negative impacts of their behavior on others’ learning as well as their own. It is important to learn the positive goals that might underlie a negative behavior and to teach students other means of more appropriately achieving these goals. School staff should also consider the context in which negative behavior is occurring, including underlying causes.

When attendance clerks flag a student with attendance or behavior challenges, school teams can use a variety of methods to find out why the student is absent and what is happening in the student’s life that led to misbehavior. This is a key step before selecting an intervention. The team can:

• Have a parent conference to determine the cause of the absence and/or negative behavior.
  
  
• Conduct a home visit.
  
  
• Use the SST or SART meeting to identify barriers and underlying causes to determine appropriate support and interventions.
  
  
• Once the team has gained an understanding of the causes of absence and behavior, they can provide appropriate interventions.

Examples of Tier 2 Strategies

• Use the SST or SART meeting to create a support plan that addresses barriers to attendance. (see guidelines for SART meeting strategies and best practices below)
  
  
• Adopt promising or evidence-based practices such as offering a Success Mentor that addresses the underlying causes.
  
  
• Refer students/families to appropriate resources to address issues related to poor attendance and/or negative behavior.
  
  
• Create an attendance and/or behavior contract that includes the expectations and expected actions by the student, parents and other key adults in the student’s life, and the educational staff.
  
  
• Write attendance goals and support into the student’s IEP.
  
  
• After assigning interventions, the team should determine when to follow up with students and families to monitor progress. If the student is still struggling, the team should determine necessary additional support and provide those new support.
  
  
• If a student continues to be chronically absent or truant, and/or presents negative behaviors, it may become necessary to implement more intensive interventions. This could include a referral to a School Attendance Review Board (SARB). However, a school site should only make a SARB referral after all other interventions have been exhausted.

Return to Top

Examples of School Attendance Review Team Meeting Strategies and Best Practices

While each phase of the SARB process serves a vital purpose, our school sites provide our primary and best line of defense against chronic absenteeism and behavioral challenges. Tier 1 systems, if fully implemented, will create a culture of attendance and positive behavior where engaged students will want to come to school, and parents will feel a sense of belonging and involvement in the school community.

For students who show early warning signs of chronic absenteeism or truancy, the SARB process commences with notifications of truancy or excessive absences. If absences persist, school sites should schedule the SART meeting, or its equivalent, at the earliest opportunity. School sites should ideally schedule a SART meeting immediately after sending the First Notice of Truancy or excessive absences to parents. Unlike the SARB conference where EC sections 48263 , 48321 , among others, provide specific procedural and substantive guidelines, the EC provides scarce guidance on how to administer these SART meetings.

Definition of Habitual Truant

The main statutory reference comes from the definition of a habitual truant in EC Section 48262 .

"Any student is deemed an habitual truant who has been reported as a truant three or more times per school year, provided that no student shall be deemed an habitual truant unless an appropriate district officer or employee has made a conscientious effort to hold at least one conference with a parent or guardian of the student and the student himself." [Emphasis Added]

What constitutes a "conscientious effort"? Any SART meeting would technically satisfy this legal requirement. Minimum legal sufficiency, however, will not yield the desired results. SART practice has evolved over time into an art form across California. If adequately developed, SART meetings can resolve and correct patterns of absenteeism at the preliminary stages, when we have the greatest opportunity to address and to curtail further absences. On the other hand, the inability to maximize our potential at this stage can create the "mill effect." If we do not cure the obstacles to absenteeism at the SART level, we risk running students and families through the "mill", pushing them into the next phases of the SARB process. Our chances of success diminish with each subsequent phase of the SARB process. It is far more difficult to reverse patterns of poor attendance once these patterns become deeply rooted. A productive SART meeting will address the following issues:

• Adequate staffing of SART meetings
  
  
• Securing attendance at SART meetings
  
  
• Setting the tone of the SART meeting
  
  
• Employing a restorative versus punitive approach
  
  
• Building strong relationships
  
  
• Identifying the root causes of absenteeism
  
  
• Providing generous support and services to address & to cure the causes of absenteeism and following up with parents and students to ensure utilization of resources
  
  
• Using the SART contract effectively

Using School Attendance Review Team to Address Behavioral Challenges

For students who are presenting ongoing behavioral challenges, school sites should schedule the SART meeting, or its equivalent, at the earliest opportunity. Other means of correction can be found in EC Section 48900.5(b) .

As part of or instead of disciplinary action, community service may be required by the student (EC Section 48900.6 )

Adequately Staffing School Attendance Review Team Meetings

School sites bear the responsibility of administering SART meetings. Consequently, school sites must endeavor to staff these meetings with ample personnel to address the needs of students and families. Group SART meetings, where schools address parents and students in a collective setting, fall short of best practice. To learn the specific challenges a family faces, a SART must meet individually with parents and students to establish positive relationships, to discover the causes of student absences, and to provide remedies to assist families in improving attendance. Students and parents will hardly ever share significant personal information in a group context.

A superior SART meeting will include a "mini panel" approach. Attendance clerks form the backbone of school site attendance monitoring. An attendance clerk, however, should not have to singlehandedly address the complex issues that arise in SART meetings. Model SARB districts throughout the state employ a variety of staff members such as a principal or assistant principal, a school or district nurse, a counselor, an attendance clerk, a PBIS specialist, and other staff members as needed to staff SART meetings. A school social worker brings expertise in understanding a student’s attendance and behavior in the context of the family and community, as well as community resources. If a student has special educational needs, the appropriate special education personnel can supplement the meeting. Some districts use a roving substitute teacher to allow full-time teachers to attend SART meetings. This tactic allows a student's full-time teacher to temporarily leave the classroom and attend a SART meeting to address the academic impact of absenteeism and negative behaviors on the student and the classroom community as a whole. A SART will only be as effective as the level of staffing in this essential meeting.

School site staff, who frequently face major shortages of time or resources, may perceive an inability to fully staff SART meetings. In the long run, however, the school district will expend far more resources to cure absenteeism in the later stages of the SARB processes. Best practice necessitates the best available personnel. Despite limited resources, attendance, including absences due to suspensions, must become a foremost priority at school sites. As model SARB school districts throughout California demonstrate, school sites can and routinely succeed in fully staffing SART meetings.

Securing Participation at School Attendance Review Team Meetings

Getting parents and students to attend SART meetings poses a great challenge. Duplicative notification measures increase the chances of securing attendance at SART meetings. A school site may attempt the following measures simultaneously:

• A letter sent home through ordinary mail.
• A letter sent home with registered mail, return receipt requested.
• A letter sent home with student.
• Reminder/follow up phone calls prior to the SART meeting.
• A home visits for our most severe absentees.

While school site meetings are preferable locations for many reasons, there is no legal requirement that a SART meeting must occur at the school site. Consequently, a home visit could serve as a SART meeting when families do not attend a SART meeting on campus. School staff, however, should attempt to follow district guidelines and best SART practices during the home visit.

The Tone of School Attendance Review Team Meetings

As the first meeting in the SARB process, the SART meeting generally provides our first opportunity to build good rapport and a solid foundation for future success. The tone of the meeting will determine its outcome. A positive and restorative tone will invite families to participate in the meeting, to share obstacles to better attendance and behavior, and to become receptive when school sites offer support services and interventions. Students, parents or guardians, and school site staff will often feel great levels of frustration. Yet, a punitive approach, faulting students and parents for patterns of absenteeism, will foreclose effective communication. If students and their parents or guardians begin to feel shame or feel like they are under attack, accused or blamed for their absenteeism, they will most likely shut down and refuse to build the positive bonds required to make progress.

Similarly, when working with behavioral issues at SART meetings, teams must cultivate a positive tone that focuses more on solutions than blame. For instance, teams should discuss “negative behaviors” by examining the context and the root causes of the concerning behavior. Effective meetings will consider the many possible corrective approaches that will restore the student’s standing as a contributing and valued member of the school community. Automatic responses, statements, and decisions, made without considering solutions, will stifle progress and tend to antagonize parents and students.  School site staff, therefore, should accept and embrace families and genuinely offer to help make future improvements.

The type of questions we ask will help define the tone of the meeting. Statements like "you are going to fail all your classes", or "how could you allow your child to miss so much school?" will push families into shame or defensive behavior. A restorative approach will avoid judgmental statements and explore the actual issues. We may ask students or parents and guardians questions utilized by the Restorative Practices Model. The following questions will likely invite students to open up and explore the consequences of missing school:

• What happened to make you miss school?
• What were you thinking about at the time?
• Who has been impacted by your missing school? In what way?
• What can you do to improve your attendance?
• What do you think we can do together to improve your attendance?

Similarly, we may ask parents the following questions:

• What happened to lead your son/daughter to miss school?
• What was your thought process at the time?
• Who has been impacted by your child's absences? In what way?
• What can you do to restore your student's good attendance?
• What do you think we can do together to improve your student’s attendance?

The ultimate goal is to reintegrate a student back into good standing and regular attendance. A restorative and positive tone will help us achieve this goal.

Building Strong Relationships at School Attendance Review Team Meetings

Strong bonds and engaging relationships with students and parents provide the basis for future success. Good relationships, along with support services and interventions, are critical to a successful SART. When school sites adequately staff SART meetings, the school site clearly demonstrates the importance of connecting with students and families. When school staff adopt a restorative tone, families will want to engage.

The introduction portion of a SART meeting could facilitate strong relationships. Prior to starting off with the substance of the meeting, school site staff should make efforts to form a personal connection with students and families. Asking students to share their interests, hobbies, or passions could spark a meaningful camaraderie. Taking time to ask parents about themselves, their hopes for their child, and their own interests will allow parents to feel valued. School staff could also share some of their own interests, their career development, and their sincere desire to help families with attendance, behavior, and academic success. Once participants relate with one another on a human and personal level, the substantive portion of the meeting will proceed more smoothly and generate superior results. There are many ways to establish a personal connection. A successful SART meeting will make use of these methods to build positive relationships with students and parents.

Identifying the Root Causes of Absenteeism and Behavior Challenges

Fostering a positive tone and amicable relationships with students and parents will create an environment where we can communicate and discover the root causes of absenteeism. Chronic absenteeism and truancy are often symptoms of larger underlying challenges. Sometimes these are also linked to the causes of behavior challenges. There may be physical barriers to good attendance such as a lack of transportation or ongoing health issues such as asthma. Sometimes emotional trauma such as grief or bullying will discourage a student from attending school and/or lead to behavioral challenges. Sometimes a student has fallen so far behind that the student feels isolated and, therefore, does not wish to attend school. The student may then start acting out their frustration in order to be removed from an uncomfortable situation. Regardless of the source of the problem, at SART meetings, school staff should explore each possible reason why students are missing school or misbehaving. Often times, there may be more than one challenge or barrier to good attendance or behavior. School site staff should discuss and explore each one. The following questions may help in making sure a school site understands each root cause of absenteeism:

• Have we discussed all the reasons why your son/daughter has missed school?
• Are there any other reasons for the absences or behavior that we have not yet discussed?

Once we have identified each reason for student absences or behavior, the school site can address each one accordingly.

Support, Interventions, and Services at School Attendance Review Team Meetings

School site SART meetings must endeavor to heal the underlying causes of absences and/or concerning behavior by generously providing services, support, and interventions. Meaningful interventions supply the medicine to cure absenteeism and to promote appropriate behavior. A meeting that does not provide services and interventions will be far less effective because the source of poor attendance or behavior remains unresolved.

Some interventions are so generally helpful to students who have missed a significant amount of school that school sites may wish to consider providing these resources to every family that attends a SART meeting. For example, tutoring or academic support will benefit every student with poor attendance. If a school district hosts a saturday school, that could help offset unexcused absences and provide missing instruction to students.  A meeting with a school counselor, a referral to a parenting class, and the use of school health staff to excuse an absence in lieu of a doctor's note will also be helpful to all students and parents who attend a SART meeting. In addition, school sites would greatly assist families by creating an inventory, booklet, or pamphlet of available community resources and services, including contact information for various agencies.

Under EC Section 48322 , the county SARB may encourage local SARBs to “maintain a continuing inventory of community resources, including alternative educational programs, and to make recommendations for the improvement of such resources and programs or for the creation of new resources and programs where none exist.”

A successful SART meeting will provide the appropriate specific resources to address the unique issues of each student as well. For example, if a student lacks reliable transportation, a bus pass or a parent rideshare program would potentially solve that particular challenge. If a student has asthma, a school nurse can create a health plan, contact the student's doctor with parental consent, and have an inhaler for the student on campus. If a student is abusing drugs or alcohol, an appropriate treatment program or drug education curriculum, along with therapy could address that specific issue. The more general and specific resources a school site provides, the greater the chances of success at the SART level.

Whenever possible, a SART should make an appointment for students and families as opposed to making a blanket referral. For instance, an appointment with a counselor, accompanied by a reminder slip with a specific time and place, is more effective than merely telling parents to initiate contact with a counselor. Parents and students who come to a SART meeting are often facing difficult challenges, signing them up at the SART meeting for a resource will help them take advantage of that resource. In addition, school sites should follow up with students and families to make sure they have used the recommended services. While time consuming, few steps will do more to improve participation than following up with families regarding services, support, and interventions. A resource can only help if students and parents take advantage of that resource.

Effective Use of School Attendance Review Team Contracts

SART meetings will typically result in an agreement between the student, parents, and the school site that staff members document in a SART Contract. Like any other good contract, the SART Contract should clearly state the terms and the expectations of and from all parties. Often times, a SART Contract will state many directives to students and parents but does not explain or list the support and services the school site will provide. This is analogous to signing a contract to buy a car. A buyer would not want the contract to cover only the payment obligations without discussing the seller's duty to provide a working car to the buyer. School sites should try and avoid unilateral SART Contracts. Ideally, everything discussed and offered during a SART meeting will be directly stated in the SART contract. This will help avoid ambiguity and provide a quick reference to parents and students.

SART contracts that list the available support services at a school site, in the form of a checklist, will dramatically improve SART meetings. If school sites list services on the contract, then school sites can easily consider each available resource for each meeting. Including the names and contact information for specific in-school and outside service providers greatly increases participation and accountability. In addition, it is easier to offer interventions and follow up with families if the contract clearly itemizes those interventions. During SART meetings, a member of the school staff should verbally review and explain each of the terms of the contract with the parents and students. Before inviting anyone to sign a contract, school sites should ask students and parents if they fully understand the terms of the contract and answer any questions that arise.

Greatest Asset

Achieving best practices at the SART level requires much time, effort, and dedication. SART meetings, however, are well worth the hard work. By employing best practices at the SART level, school sites can dramatically improve student attendance and behavior. A properly administered SART meeting will afford school sites the opportunity for early intervention and will prove to be the greatest asset in reducing absenteeism and improving behavior through the SARB process.

Return to Top