Partner Spotlight: Fulton County Schools, Georgia

Background

Fulton County Schools, one of Georgia’s largest districts, serves a diverse student population with a commitment to supporting student success. Like many districts across the country, Fulton faced rising levels of chronic absenteeism, especially during and after the pandemic. To meet the challenge, the district partnered with EveryDay Labs beginning in the 2020–21 school year, initially focusing on Title I schools before expanding districtwide.

The Challenge: Post-Pandemic Absenteeism and Limited Systems

When Charity Trowbridge, Director of Student Services, stepped into her role overseeing attendance, she found a district struggling with both efficiency and consistency. Staff were still manually preparing thousands of paper notifications, and attendance data was fragmented and unreliable. The pandemic only compounded these challenges, with absenteeism reaching record highs.

Beyond the operational hurdles, Fulton lacked a consistent, strategic approach to identifying students most at risk and tracking interventions. Attendance often lived in silos—seen as the responsibility of social workers or assistant principals rather than a shared, districtwide priority.

The Solution: Data-Driven Systems and Shared Accountability

Partnering with EveryDay Labs, Fulton automated attendance notifications and, over time, integrated the EveryDay Labs platform into their daily work. This shift allowed schools to move from reactive outreach to proactive planning.

Key elements of their approach included:

• Tiered Attendance Plans: Schools were grouped by chronic absenteeism bands, with each band having specific requirements for training, reporting, and engagement.
  
  
• Data-Driven Coaching: Charity used the platform to design school-specific coaching and plans, helping leaders make decisions based on actual trends—such as identifying patterns in low-attendance days and aligning incentives to address them.
  
  
• Legislative Alignment: With new Georgia legislation requiring attendance teams at schools with 15%+ chronic absenteeism, EveryDay Labs’ notifications and dashboards provided built-in interventions and reporting to support compliance.
  
  
• Targeted Supports: Through grants and community partnerships, schools piloted creative solutions—from late bus pickups and mentoring to utility discounts for strong attendance in the opening weeks of school.

The clear connection across all of this work is the data, and the commitment to using data to drive strategies and action. “I always say if EveryDay Labs went away, it would make my job very, very hard to do because all of the things that have been built and developed all align to the data, ” shared Charity.

The Results: Building Capacity and Changing Culture

Over the past several years, Fulton County has seen steady declines in chronic absenteeism alongside measurable improvements in satisfactory attendance. Schools that fully embraced EveryDay Pro and data-driven planning have made the most progress—including some with the most significant socioeconomic challenges.

Importantly, the work has helped shift culture. Attendance is no longer viewed as an isolated task for social workers, but as an all-in effort tied to school culture, student engagement, and equity. As Charity notes, “Attendance is the output of something—whether a student behavior, a family behavior, or school culture. Schools with high engagement and strong culture naturally have fewer absences.”

For other districts beginning this work, Charity offers practical advice:

• Differentiate the Rollout: Keep training approachable for beginners while offering depth for advanced users to avoid overwhelming staff.
  
  
• Integrate Data into Planning: Build capacity by pulling actionable insights from dashboards and connecting them to concrete steps.
  
  
• Prioritize Change Management: Combine top-down accountability with bottom-up coaching to build investment at every level.
  
  

Fulton County’s journey highlights how the right systems, leadership, and partnerships can transform attendance work from a compliance task into a driver of student success.

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