From Awareness to Action: A Powerful Day at the Arizona Attendance Summit

On August 27, 2025, over 70 educators, researchers, community leaders, and district administrators from across Arizona gathered for the state’s Attendance Summit, hosted by EveryDay Labs in collaboration with Read On Arizona and WestEd. Held at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, the event marked a significant milestone in addressing chronic absenteeism. The theme—From Awareness to Action: The Path to Better Attendance—guided a day rich with insights, community, and forward momentum.

The Challenge We Face

Across Arizona, chronic absenteeism remains a pressing issue. Nearly one in three students in grades 1–8 were chronically absent in the 2022–23 school year, with even higher rates among economically disadvantaged students. From early childhood through high school, the data is clear: missing school has a profound impact on academic achievement, especially in reading, where a 1% increase in attendance correlates with a 1.5% increase in third grade ELA proficiency.

“Chronic absenteeism is one of those things that can have long lasting impacts if we don’t fix it.” - Dr. Paul Perrault, Helios Education Foundation

The summit highlighted not only the scale of the issue, but also its complexity. As Dr. Jeremy Singer reminded participants, chronic absenteeism is an ecological issue deeply intertwined with trauma, inequities, barriers, and school climate.

Solutions in Action: Lessons from the Field

A bright spots panel, breakout sessions, and campfire circles offered a chance to go deep on what’s working—and what’s not. From small tests of change to system-wide reforms, district teams shared actionable strategies that are already making a difference.

Avondale Elementary: Small Cycles, Big Change

Kellie Duguid and Casey Frank of Avondale Elementary showcased their use of the PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) cycle to tackle absenteeism. Their team focused on four key levers: improving the tone of communications, rewriting the student handbook in welcoming language, launching social media campaigns around high-risk “dip days,” and deploying personalized messages. They also addressed teacher absenteeism, recognizing its ripple effect on student attendance.

Buckeye Elementary: Data-Driven Culture

Kara McDivitt’s team shared how they integrated chronic absence into their district’s strategic plan, empowering assistant principals to lead attendance improvement plans on each campus. Data is reviewed monthly in AP meetings and quarterly site visits, fostering accountability and shared learning across schools. Additionally, they focused on teachers making calls home about attendance after seeing that research that parents were more responsive to teacher calls.

Phoenix Union: Seeing the Whole Student

“Attendance improvement is the most powerful prevention strategy. Chronic absenteeism, dropout rates, school enrollment, and graduation rates are all deeply connected” - Cyndi Tercero

At Phoenix Union, Cyndi Tercero’s team developed a comprehensive, human-centered attendance framework. They revised their interventions to focus on relationships rather than punishment, created family-friendly materials for outreach, and launched a system of intervention centers to reconnect absent or unenrolled students. They also made sure that classified staff received high quality professional development to support the attendance work. One standout practice: helping students identify extracurriculars aligned with their interests as a re-engagement tool. 

Tempe Elementary: Moving away from punitive approaches

We were focusing on truancy, on the punitive side of things and it wasn’t working. It hadn’t worked for decades.” -Cindy Denton

Tempe Elementary undertook a transformative effort in how they approached attendance improvement, knowing that the effort they were putting into academic supports was wasted if students weren’t in school to learn. Notably, they shifted away from the punitive approaches they had been using for years and put strong attendance teams in place at each school. This was possible because of strong support among top leadership in the district and done with the help of EveryDay Labs.

Tempe Union: Looking for Patterns

Tempe Union realized they were missing critical information by only looking at average daily attendance. A 92% ADA was masking chronic absenteeism rates above 40%. Once they started viewing their data with a new lens, they knew there was work to be done. They dug into the data even more, with the help of tools like the EveryDay Labs platform, to find patterns and trends like common days missed. They were then able to communicate directly with families about these patterns.

Statewide Insights: Building Systems of Support

From the main stage, leaders from Read On Arizona, WestEd, and Helios Education Foundation provided a sweeping overview of Arizona’s attendance landscape. The state’s Chronic Absence Task Force has been working to update policies, expand data systems, and center evidence-based strategies—including those tailored for mobile students who switch schools mid-year.

“Attendance improvement teams are about shared responsibility…we all have a role to play.” - Dr. Lenay Dunn, WestEd

Dr. Bin Suh from the Arizona Department of Health Services connected attendance to health and early childhood development, showing how Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are tightly linked to chronic absenteeism. Her message was clear: improving attendance requires a whole-child, whole-family, whole-community approach.

Community Solutions and Peer Networks

A session from Valley of the Sun United Way and FrameShift Group spotlighted the power of community partnerships. Through initiatives like SAAM (Supporting Attendance Across Maricopa County), local organizations are aligning resources, creating peer learning networks, and deploying mentors and coaches to meet families where they are.

A Call to Action

EveryDay Labs closed the day by inviting attendees to take one concrete step forward. Whether it’s implementing a new family outreach strategy, revising attendance communications, or improving coordination across departments, the message was the same: attendance is the foundation of student success—and we all have a role to play.

The summit reinforced that while there is no silver bullet, there is a path forward: data-driven, relationship-centered, community-powered, and grounded in research.