Partner Spotlight: The School District of Lee County, Florida

Background:

Located in southwestern Florida on the Gulf coast, the School District of Lee County is the 8th largest district in the state, serving over 100,000 students across grades K-12. Despite having done significant, successful work to slash their chronic absenteeism rates nearly in half pre-pandemic, the district faced the same post-pandemic chronic absenteeism challenges as many other districts nationwide. Paul Milford, Administrator of Social Work Services, was tasked with leading the charge to turn absenteeism around.  

The Challenge: Covid, Hurricanes, and Family Re-engagement 

With pandemic learning turning school as we knew it upside down, the Lee County team had their work cut out for them when classroom doors re-opened and families hesitated to return. Whether it was staying home with slight sniffles, and for longer periods than before, or the mindset that there wasn’t a need to be in school when their student could complete their assignment online, the new attitudes around in-person learning were hindering good attendance. The team knew they had to re-engage and re-educate families around the importance of in-person learning. 

Leaning into the strategies that had served them well pre-pandemic, including strong Tier 1 supports and aligning academic goals with attendance goals, the district began to see promising improvement. But when Hurricane Ian hit in September 2022, closing schools for almost a month and causing severe damage to the entire community, attendance saw another dip. More family re-engagement was in order, along with actionable data to deeply understand the challenges at the district, school, and student levels and drive strategies to meet the needs of Lee County families.

The Solution: Dedicated Attendance Data Dashboard & Positive Communications 

After hearing another district at a conference share how the EveryDay Labs dashboard was helping them pinpoint where attendance issues were and bring more families into the conversation, Paul was intrigued. Beginning the EveryDay Labs partnership in the 23-24 school year with a pilot of 20 Title I schools, the team was impressed to see 64% of the students who were enrolled in the attendance nudge intervention improved their attendance. By leveraging these proactive, positive, and consistent communications, families were invited into a conversation around the importance of attendance for their student’s academic success, and attendance improved accordingly. 

Before the partnership, educators were doing a lot of manual, time-consuming data analysis to uncover attendance trends. The EveryDay Labs partnership changed that by automatically surfacing attendance patterns and trends, and educators could quickly see which days of school students were missing the most, who needed immediate intervention, and who was improving.  

Paul also rolled out fun Tier I incentives that resonated with families and students throughout the year, including a March Madness competition. Armed with clear data on specific student challenges, they were also able to align different incentive programs accordingly. For example, incentives for Friday attendance were put into place to motivate the students who often missed Fridays. 

To support Tier III students, the district has also rolled out summer intervention groups, engaging their families throughout the summer with positive communications and social worker outreach to continue to build strong, trusting relationships. 46% of students who received the summer intervention avoided Tier III issues the following year! 

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The Results: Better Attendance, Expanded Partnership

Attendance has continued to improve throughout the 24-25 school year. In March 2024, the district’s chronic absenteeism rate was 29%, improving to 25.8% by March 2025. With these continued improvements to both attendance and staff capacity, Lee County will be expanding the pilot districtwide and rolling out the attendance nudges and dashboard to all 100 schools in the 25-26 school year!  

Better attendance is not just a dashboard metric. Paul has been excited to see the academic impact of improved attendance, particularly the many students with low GPAs and behind in school credits who got back on track for graduation as they improved their attendance. 

“I love the dashboard, I believe in the dashboard. You can love something as much as you want, but if the data isn’t there to back it up it's not a good investment. And for us we started small, we did the pilot and it worked. We had thousands of students improve their attendance and I'm just very thankful that we found this program because it's really helping our students,” Paul shares.  

His advice for districts who are working to improve attendance? “Any expectation that we have of students and families has to be communicated and reinforced to them. Sometimes we forget that setting the expectation that attendance is an important part of student success…We have to take the initiative to make sure that they're being communicated to about attendance and then we can set the interventions in place to support those improved attendance behaviors.”

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Curious about how an EveryDay Labs partnership can help improve attendance in your district? Reach out today! 

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