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This year, the back to school season is hardly a return to “normal” as districts contend with the rise of the Delta variant of the coronavirus. Concerns around missing students, learning loss, and protocols to protect the health of students and teachers are top of mind for every school leader across the country. The “new normal” in K-12 education requires increased support for students and families that is personalized and scalable to ensure all needs are met. AllHere’s adaptable chatbot helps schools send outgoing messages that reach families on their most preferred communication channel—text messages—as well as automatically respond to their incoming questions. “AllHere’s chatbot is designed so that it can serve as a multi-faceted advisor for families,” said Aliya Haque, Chief Product Officer at AllHere. “We build the initial bank of knowledge in collaboration with our school partners, and over time, the chatbot becomes smarter and learns to respond to a wide range of questions and concerns from families.” AllHere sends students and families timely reminders, personalized responses, and empathetic check-in messages that can meet a variety of needs, including the ones outlined below. Navigate new schedules and health requirements. Help families navigate questions about vaccine requirements, health insurance, wellness resources, and more with automated, around-the-clock support. AllHere responds to incoming questions within 45 seconds to prevent unnecessary confusion about logistical information and encourage positive family engagement. Nudge families towards successful enrollment.  Registering for school can be complicated and confusing for families. Many may need a hand navigating the registration process. Nudge them with timely, personalized reminders to complete important paperwork – so a missed deadline never stands between them and their future. Gently alert families to drops in attendance. AllHere’s approach is based on research proven to increase attendance and engagement rates in K-12 schools. The chatbot integrates with your LMS and SIS to track data on absences so that when students miss a certain number of school days, their guardian automatically receives a nudge via text message. Streamline and scale your tech support. Ensure your students have access to the key information, documents, and online resources they need to succeed. Instantly and automatically respond to technical questions from families and students and free up your team for the complex projects that keep your district on the cutting edge. Get to know your student body and parent community. In addition to sending out information, your bot can be used to collect information as well by deploying short surveys. The data from these surveys is collected, tabulated, and distributed to district staff to analyze. Districts can use these surveys to support student well-being by getting a pulse on their student body’s mental health and more. When discussing sensitive subjects such as mental health, the bot will notify a district team member ASAP if it receives any responses or messages that are in need of escalation. Provide students with educational support and guidance. Empower students to find and take advantage of academic support and guidance – no matter where they are. Your chatbot can answer 85% of questions from families and students about their academic progress. When questions require a human touch, your chatbot will instantly route questions to an expert on your team. Offer timely support for linguistically diverse families. Families that speak English as a second language face extra challenges when it comes to communicating with their child’s school and teachers. AllHere’s chatbot can send and respond to messages in English, Spanish, and French, and will be adding dozens more languages by the end of this school year.

During back-to-school season, staff and teachers handle huge amounts of information that families need to ensure their child’s success and stay engaged in the school community. Even so, parents often feel unsure of where to turn—especially after hours. As we know, parents and children often only see each other in the evenings when everyone is tired and no one can remember if the field trip was changed from Tuesday to Wednesday. When schools are able to connect consistently with families in successful ways, students benefit in many ways, including fewer absences, higher pass rates, and a greater likelihood of staying in the district. And it doesn’t have to be costly or time-intensive. The eBook Strategies to Streamline, Scale, and Simplify Communication to Reduce Stress for Educators was just released to aid educators facing communication strain during the back to school season, and throughout the school year. For a quick read, here are five simple strategies to facilitate communication without placing an extra burden on staff. Define your message What are you communicating? Why? How much information is necessary to get the point across? For most routine communications, that’s your end point. Busy families just want the basics about most events and activities: who, what, where, when, and how. Bring good news Make it routine to share information about individual students’ progress and positive milestones. Putting in a good word about students is especially beneficial for those who had negative school experiences themselves as children and for those who are new to the American educational system and aren’t sure what to expect. Stay ahead of the curve Sometimes schools need to provide information about complex topics. Examples include mask and social distancing policies, curriculum decisions, or expectations for behavior. During times of uncertainty and high anxiety, leaders who initiate communications, express concern for families’ needs, and connect via multiple channels decrease the possibility that misinformation and dissent will flourish. Determine the point of contact The simple step of including a person to email or call for more information about a specific event or activity can reduce the number of inquiries to the main office—which the staff likely would have had to forward anyway. Overcommunicate up front to prevent confusion Establishing lines of communication early in the school year sets a strong foundation. It’s also a good idea to revisit your communication strategies regularly to make sure they’re having the desired impact. Use all the tools at your disposal—email, your website, town hall meetings, open houses, informal events, videos, calls, texts, and social media—to reach every family in the mode that they prefer. Among these tools, there’s particularly strong research about mobile’s effectiveness. 80% of the population has a mobile phone. Open rates for text messages are significantly higher than email or postal mail The average mobile phone user sends 74 texts per day. We leverage mobile with our evidence-based AllHere Virtual Advisor (AVA). AVA enables student success using artificial intelligence, chatbot, and natural language processing technologies to communicate 24/7 via automated two-way texting. Our platform builds on key insights and evidence-based strategies about how best to partner with families so they feel looked after and informed. Our approach has been documented by randomized control trial research to reduce chronic absenteeism by 17%, reduce course failures by 38%, and increase student retention. Best of all, AVA ensures that everyone receives the same information—including whether that field trip was changed from Tuesday to Wednesday. To learn more about implementing AVA and relieving stress on staff as your families return to school, contact us to schedule a demo.

As the new academic year begins, the environment is—once again—unlike any other. Many teachers are entering the classroom without trepidation rather than optimism. Administrators, teachers, and staff are the foundation of great schools. They unlock students’ academic, social, and emotional development. Yet one in five new administrators leave their jobs within the first five years. This turnover has a big financial impact on school districts. It’s also detrimental to relationships with students and staff and slows implementation of school improvement plans. Teachers’ unions, superintendents’ organizations, parent groups, and community leaders all recognize that an inherently stressful workplace became even more stressful during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent surveys like this one provide a closer look at just how dire the situation is. Three in five school leaders say they “often” or “always” feel stressed at work, twice the rate of other workers. The causes range from a lack of technical support to worries about implementation of COVID-19 safety measures. Six best practices to put in place now So how can your district and your school do a better job of supporting these crucial leaders? In a recent webinar hosted by our Founder and CEO Joanna Smith, we explored six ways to scale administrators’ superpowers in your district right now. Establish standards for communication with administrators, staff, and families—and stick to them. Model these standards from the top down as a collective learning community so everyone knows what they are and recognizes their importance. Put systems in place to ensure that the standards are being followed. Work hard to conserve administrators’ time rather than treating it as something to be spent freely. While it’s true that school leaders and administrative staff are in a position of a greater responsibility by the very nature of their jobs, it’s important to have empathy for the limits of their endurance—especially now. Technology can be leveraged to support the goal of freeing up their time for the most important interactions. Make time and opportunity for administrators to collaborate on a top priority when building a schedule. Sometimes responsibilities and tasks become siloed, whether within a school or within a department at the district level. Formalize times and opportunities for staff to share their accomplishments and successes and pitfalls they’ve encountered. Give families unlimited, 24/7 access to one-to-one, transformative, innovative, research-based support. Conversational artificial intelligence delivered via text—the technology that the AllHere Virtual Advisor is built on—is an example of this research-based support. Such tools free administrative staff to focus on the most impactful interactions with families and students. Reduce administrative tasks that have little or nothing to do with teaching or supporting students. First, collect information on all the responsibilities school leaders and administrative staff routinely handle. Prioritize them. Then decide what can be reassigned temporarily, what can be automated, and what can be permanently offloaded. Encourage administrators to suggest more efficient ways to organize their time and responsibilities. While the start of the school year is always overwhelming, patterns quickly emerge—and addressing the major inefficiencies now will give your administrative staff more opportunities to step fully into their superpowers as the year goes on. By implementing these six best practices now, school and district leader can make a real impact on their administrative teams’ stress levels. That will have a ripple effect to other educators, teachers, students, and families.

As of mid-September, schools across the U.S. are officially back in session. Not coincidentally, September is also Attendance Awareness Month. Getting students into the habit of coming to class every day matters: Research shows that attendance patterns within the first month of school set the stage for the rest of the year. Taking action to engage students and families about attendance is more essential than ever in 2021. Absenteeism, enrollment declines, and educational inequities have all been exacerbated by the pandemic. But the possibility of quarantines to prevent the spread of COVID-19 complicates the messaging. Educators want students to attend school AND be safe and healthy while doing so. Simplifying and personalizing Because chronic absenteeism is a systemic problem, addressing it requires a comprehensive approach that involves schools, families, and communities. But that doesn’t mean the solution needs to be complicated and burdensome. To maximize the effectiveness of our approach, AllHere focuses on: 1. Simplifying content and reducing the effort it takes families to access support. 2. Personalizing information for recipients to make the communication more effective. Data that is specific to the students increases its impact. 3. Paying attention to the whole child and providing families with resources and support to get past the barriers that may prevent attendance. “What’s changing outcomes is our emphasis on outreach to families, restorative messaging, strategic timing, and 24/7 unlimited support with any barrier to their child’s attendance, said Joanna Smith, AllHere’s Founder and CEO. Our AllHere Virtual Advisor is able to offload routine communication tasks from school staff and educators, allowing them to concentrate on students who need more hands-on and personalized support. We combine the relevancy and timeliness of communication via texting with the use of various artificial intelligence approaches – including mimicking cognitive functions and utilizing machine learning algorithms. An approach backed by research The reasons we chose this approach are summarized in our new research brief. In particular, we reference the work of Dr. Peter Bergman, Associate Professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and a member of the AllHere Advisory Board. His use of data and computer science to develop scalable, cost-effective interventions that improve educational outcomes for youth is central to what we do. Our AI-powered platform for automated outreach represents a universal strategy for encouraging good attendance in all students, offering proven efficacy for both in-person and virtual learning settings. It’s an innovative, novel, and evidence-based solution that increases student participation in school, reduces the dropout rate, and builds engagement with families. In an era when the problem of chronic absenteeism is growing more serious due to evolving and unique circumstances, AllHere offers a simple, powerful solution to help families overcome barriers and ensure their children are present and engaged in learning, wherever that learning is happening.

Hi! My name is De’Ajha West. I recently graduated High School and am serving as a Summer Intern at AllHere. As a marketing intern at AllHere, this experience has opened my eyes to the staggering issue of absenteeism that school districts face across the country. Absenteeism can often go unnoticed, and it isn’t talked about enough in student & family communities. As September, which is National Attendance Awareness Month, comes to a close, I took the time to interview to Phillip Shaver, AllHere’s Vice President of Client Experience. He is also the former District Attendance Coordinator for the School Board of Broward County. As a former Broward County Public Schools student, I was especially interested in hearing his tips and perspective about how schools and districts can start out strong and improve attendance to help both families and students. Parents/Guardians and Students As the phrase says, “It all starts from home.” According to Phillip, it’s important to ensure that families do all that they can to provide their child with a productive schedule that helps to keep them on track and on time to school. This includes: making a plan for getting to school on time everyday and confirming a back up transportation plan just in case of any last minute changes. It also includes keeping or posting a printed copy of the school year calendar where it will be seen (e.g., on the refrigerator, task board, and/or bedroom door) throughout the home. Whenever possible, parents/guardians should also make sure to document their child’s absence by calling in or sending an approved note, promptly, if their child has to miss school. It’s also important to update emergency contact information, so that the most accurate information is on file. Districts and Schools Phillip also shared tips that districts and schools could use to guarantee that students start the school year off with solid attendance. These tips include: Making a plan for monthly attendance data reviews. This means identifying students who have missed 10% or more school days so far. Schools should determine if additional help is needed for each family using this information. Speaking out on the ‘attendance health’ of the school/district regularly at public meetings such as PTA, school board, and advisory groups. Attendance data is relevant all year and should be a key point at these events in order to raise awareness. Make sure that parents/guardians are both aware of and can easily access district and/or school procedures for reporting absences and tardies. Again, encourage parents/guardians to update their contact information in case they need to be contacted in an emergency. With Attendance Awareness Month coming to an end, the team at AllHere wants to ensure that districts and/or schools across the country support parents/guardians with effective practices, policies, and systems to address chronic absenteeism. Keeping communication open and positive is the start of scaling solutions that can work for everyone.

On September 24th, AllHere Education hosted a webinar in conjunction with Education Week. The webinar featured Dr. Mike DeArmand and Dr. Peter Begrman, and was hosted by Kristen Diamond and Joanna Smith of AllHere. In recognition of Attendance Awareness Month, the team set out to share valuable insights around evidence-based intervention strategies. Dr. Mike DeArmand is a Senior Research Analyst at Center for Reinventing Public Education (CPRE) in Seattle. CPRE is an initiative supported by the University of Washington – Bothell, that examines efforts to rewire the system for school coherence, ongoing improvement, and excellence for every student—moving from the classroom to the school, to policy implications. Or, as DeArmand puts it “how adult practices need to shift to meet the needs of students.” Dr. Peter Bergman is an Associate Professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and Co-Chair of the Education Technology Initiative at Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT. Bergman realized there was a communication problem in schools when he saw stacks upon stacks of return mail in the Los Angeles School District office. Report cards had just gone out – hundreds of students and families missed getting last term’s grades. Replay the webinar here. CPRE Pandemic Insights Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, DeArmand and CPRE have been tracking how schools and school districts have responded to all the changes required to keep students in school regardless of place. In the Spring of 2020, schools had to close and suddenly students were not required to physically attend school – district leaders had to figure out how to get online learning up and running. School is where students spend most of their time – without the common resources of being in a building together, other challenges became apparent. Attendance was affected by inequality in access to technology, housing, food, and economic security more than ever. A review of national samples suggested that many districts were not tracking attendance at all at this point. By Fall 2020 district leaders begin to notice “missing students.” Some districts began to implement tracking systems for attendance for online courses, but the vast majority of school districts struggled to track remote learning. As the school year progressed, these missing students became chronically absent – they were missing students, were they becoming lost students? Towards the end of the 2020-2021 school year, most schools had nailed down a way to measure attendance. Some districts measured hours of instruction, some measured based on task completion. When school went back in session during Fall 2021, districts were more prepared and proactive in handling instruction and administration. The reality was that they continued to work against issues of technology access and social equity. The chaos of the 2020-2021 school year made a lasting impact – schools now had to find and support their missing students. In addition to supporting missing students, districts must work to restore the pandemic’s negative effect on academic performance, especially among Black, Latino, and Native American Students. Social and learning conditions matter more than ever. District leaders are recognizing that something must be done to help all students. “Attending” school is not the same undertaking for every student. Meals, internet access, having an adult around to help, or having to self-motivate for an entire day or remote learning are all part of the attendance process. Attendance Works has a great approach to understanding how schools utilize intervention strategies within their student body. In this tiered system, we see the target group of students decrease in size but increase in terms of outreach and intervention intensity. The tiered approach taken by most schools requires administrators to get the right student, using the right approach, at the right time – every time. Due to the critical nature of Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions, it is common for school districts to over-invest in the tools and resources needed to manage higher tier interventions. Unfortunately, this “top loading” of resources has unintended consequences. What begins as a lack of universal prevention ends up being a “layover” where students are at risk, but the school has nowhere to direct them in terms of resources. Schools without adequate Tier 1 resources are rarely reaching students missing school here and there – and they aren’t looking for any patterns until students reach a level of chronic absenteeism. As a result of this misallocation of resources, more students end up in situations requiring Tier 2 or Tier 3 interventions. You need Tier 1 for everyone. Universal prevention helps all students stay on track and attend school each day. Applying Tier 1 intervention strategies to all students, regardless of how often they miss school prevents students from going missing in the first place. Another critical aspect of keeping students from losing their way is investments in the whole school experience. Support for the whole school is the foundation on which all the other tiers rest, and it ultimately influences whether higher tier strategies work in a district. The combination of Tier 1 Universal Prevention interventions and accessible foundational supports help districts reduce barriers in getting students to school, keep families and students engaged, and address attendance in real-time. An Evidence-Based Approach Back to the academic story with Bergman and DeArmand, and how the tiers of intervention strategies relate. When looking at school districts – there is so much variability, down to every building operating in its own way. With such a diverse sample, what is “good evidence”? Casual information is more difficult to unravel when compared to correlational insight, but neither carries the weight that would satisfy our presenters. Randomized control trials are the pinnacle of evidence for ESSA. This level of rigor is a necessary approach given today’s challenges and needs. In these RCT scenarios, we can draw the strongest evidence of impact. We would consider this Tier 1 evidence – the most critical and substantiated. This is where Bergman and DeArmand have been directing their resources. Bergman’s research has proven that across the US, and even globally, parents vastly underestimate the number of missed school days and assignments. On average, 30% of parents thought their student missed zero assignments but in actuality, this is 20%. What is contributing to the difference between perceived attendance and actual attendance? Not news is NOT good news when it comes to school. In his initial trials, Bergman began sending texts every two weeks with attendance/absences and missed assignments (tests, class assignments, homework, etc.).  His belief was that when you reach out immediately, parents have the conversation with their students sooner. Engagement between parent and school increases interaction between parents and students with positive outcomes – and rather than wait for a report card, parents can follow along in real-time. The one-man-pilot program was a success in LASD where Bergman got started and this drove home the importance of meeting people where they are – updating existing approaches to meet current needs. Bergman’s research has proved that it is worth prioritizing texting because: It’s easier to track a phone number than address in many instances Texting is nonintrusive and familiar Texting establishes real communication between families and schools When we open up communication between schools and families, we can begin asking important questions. Do families feel supported and does the school district meet them where they are? Do we know what the attendance journey looks like for students? We can’t know what’s preventing kids from attending unless we ask. Assumptions and inferences do nothing to inform action. The Path Forward in Attendance Interventions If you’re considering introducing a text message-based attendance assistant within your district, we have a few tips from AllHere’s founder, Joanna Smith. First, conduct your due diligence – look for RCT-proven platforms that provide Tier 1 Universal Prevention off the shelf. Secondly, make sure that any platform you are considering is multi-lingual and interactive. This ensures that every student can be reached and any messages from your district provide value to students and families. Finally, don’t overlook the technical integration capabilities of your platform – make sure that your ATS and other student administration platforms are supported. The best virtual attendance platforms can help reinforce and simplify the attendance process for each student. If you’re curious about AllHere, don’t hesitate to ask us!

Guest Blog Authored by: Phillip Shaver, VP of Client Success, AllHere While writing this post, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted school operations in the United States for 18 months. Many school systems across the country remained closed from March 2020, through the 2020/2021 school year, and plan to have all students return in-person during the 2021/2022 school year. Parents and educators have ongoing concerns about student safety, learning loss, and equitable access to resources. While we can’t change what’s happened over the last year and a half, communities can reassess how to move forward understanding lessons learned during the pandemic. Achievement Gap to Achievement Canyon The achievement gap typically represents a concept where non-white students are compared to white students on various metrics including reading and math assessments, graduation rates, dropout rates, and post-secondary education/training plans. During the most uncertain times of the pandemic students were expected to learn remotely while teachers were expected to learn how to teach remotely. Our team is dedicated to understanding the impacts of chronic absenteeism as a lead indicator for student outcomes. Among students who previously had barriers to regular attendance due to family issues, homelessness, poverty, and other resource scarcity, the access to school now relied on the student’s computing device and internet connection. For many, the achievement gap grew between students who had access and support versus those who had neither. Strategies for Change Most students attend school regularly. Most parents want their child to succeed in school. Students identified with the most severe chronic absenteeism are absent more than 30 days in a school year. In most states, it is the responsibility of the school district to promote and enforce compulsory attendance laws. What can a school system do to make a positive impact? Know your students. One of the first places a district can look deeper into the system-wide data of chronically absent students is demographics. Look beyond the outward demographics, like skin color, and into the poverty levels and geography. Many communities will find concentrations of chronically absent students in historically poor neighborhoods. Community engagement partnerships. The primary purpose of a school system is to educate students through graduation. For the students and families that are struggling to get to school regularly, there may be social services available but the family either doesn’t know or is hesitant to accept help. Many counties and local agencies are ready to invest where there is a need. Beyond the classroom, students need help. Consider transportation solutions beyond the traditional school bus. There may be room for a community shuttle, free/discounted bus passes for students, or partnerships with services like HopSkipDrive who operate with a focus on equity. Policy revisions. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, stakeholders in Broward County, Florida expressed concern about student attendance, equity, and district policies. District staff and advisory councils worked together to clarify language in the policy to ensure the application of policies were fair and consistent throughout the 220+ public schools in the system. The revised attendance policy provides clear language for parents and schools about how to excuse an absence with their child’s school. Mental health was added to the list of excusable reasons for an absence, combined under “Student Illness” to help people understand that a student’s health involves the whole student, mind and body. Suspensions. When a student is suspended from school, they also miss the direct instruction the school is there to provide. With vague language, some schools may have recorded students as absent rather than suspended, adding to the count of unexcused absences that count towards truancy with the potential to face further legal interventions instead of relationship-building. The revised language explains how suspensions are counted regarding a student’s attendance record to help avoid a double penalty. Emergency School Closures. Already deep into the COVID-19 pandemic, Florida remains in the potential path of natural disasters. A new section was added to the attendance policy to address the continuing pandemic and any other possible situation that could cause a school building to close with the possibility of providing instruction remotely. Later that school year, a wall collapsed in a school building (no one was injured), and the school was able to temporarily pivot back to 100% remote learning until another in-person solution was determined. Leverage technology for engaging curriculum. If the curriculum does not spark joy for the student, what is their motivation to pay attention? Veteran teachers who previously suffered an ongoing battle for student attention from their electronic devices found new ways to engage students and encourage the use of cell phones and tablets. Teachers who may have been late adopters to instructional technology found the help they needed through online tools like NearPod, Kahoot!, Mentimeter, and BrainPOP. For the teachers who were new to these resources during the pandemic, they are likely to keep these engagement tools in the toolbox for years to come. Absence prevention strategies include identifying root causes for absences, equitable access to school, family resources, policy implications, and engaging curriculum. Learn more about how AllHere can be a part of your community’s future student success stories.

Housing insecurity is by far the greatest predictor of students’ chronic absenteeism from school. Researchers have issued many reports about the adverse effects of homelessness—such as this particularly extensive report in Michigan. It notes that: Unhoused students have the highest rates of chronic absenteeism of any group. Forty percent of them were chronically absent in this 2018 study, two-and-a-half times higher than the statewide average. Income is also associated with chronic absenteeism. Economically disadvantaged students were chronically absent at three times the rate of their higher-income peers. Students who are chronically absent are less likely to meet grade-level standards and more likely to drop out of school. Even when children are able to make it to school, homelessness and housing instability are widely recognized as determinants of academic success. That’s because other factors—such as unaffordability, crowding, and poor maintenance—can also adversely affect student performance. The impacts on learning extend from early childhood and kindergarten all the way through college. The current situation While homelessness and housing insecurity affecting school-age children is not a new issue, its urgency is growing due to the COVID-19 pandemic and more frequent natural disasters. The pandemic poses a threat to housing affordability and quality, particularly for families and children of color. Black and Latinx adults are reporting higher rates of income loss and missed rent or mortgage payments—but the ongoing nature of the crisis makes it hard to gather data about the repercussions. Millions of children are affected by natural disasters every year. Their frequency, intensity, and severity are all increasing, expanding their harmful effects. In the 10-year period from 2010 to 2019, 119 disasters in the United States met or exceeded $1 billion in damages and costs, affecting children’s homes, schools, and communities. Beyond the immediate trauma and harm caused by natural disaster exposure, children also may suffer longer-term physical, psychological, and educational deficits. After Hurricane Katrina, for examples, an estimated 196,000 public school students in Louisiana had to change schools, and approximately 50,000 students did not attend school during the remainder of the academic year. Further, trauma exposure can alter brain anatomy and functioning, inhibiting learning and memory processes—and both long-term homelessness and natural disasters can be traumatic. How mobile messaging powered by artificial intelligence can help Children and their families who face either chronic housing insecurity or an unexpected change in their living arrangements due to events like the COVID-19 pandemic and recent natural disasters—like Hurricane Ida, which left 1 million people without power in Louisiana and displaced tens of thousands from their homes—need every tool at our disposal. In an era when the problem of chronic absenteeism is growing more serious due to evolving and unique circumstances, AllHere offers a simple, powerful solution to help families overcome barriers and ensure their children are present and engaged in learning, wherever that learning is happening. To maximize the effectiveness of its mobile messaging platform powered by artificial intelligence, AllHere focuses on: 1. Simplifying content and reducing the effort it takes families to access support. 2. Personalizing information for recipients to make the communication more effective and increase academic impact. 3. Paying attention to the whole child and providing families with resources and support. “What’s changing outcomes is our emphasis on outreach to families, restorative messaging, strategic timing, and 24/7 unlimited support with any barrier to their child’s attendance,” said Joanna Smith, AllHere’s Founder and CEO. AllHere’s AI-powered platform for automated outreach represents a universal strategy for encouraging attendance in all students. It’s an innovative, novel, and evidence- based solution that increases student participation in school, reduces the dropout rate, and builds engagement with all families, regardless of whether they have a permanent mailing address and secure housing.

Not all absences from school are equal. Although any child who misses more than 10% of the school days in a year is at higher risk of low academic achievement, researchers are noticing differences between excused and unexcused absences. A recent study conducted in Madison, Wisconsin, found that students whose absences were excused—which means a parent or guardian notified the school they would be out and explained why—performed on par with their peers who were in class every day, even if they missed 15 to 18 days. On the other hand, children with just one unexcused absence performed much worse academically than their peers with no absence. In math, for example, the average student with no absences was at the 58th percentile. The average student with just one unexcused absence was at the 38th percentile. And the average student with 18 unexcused absences were at the 17th percentile. What these red flags may signal The researcher team in the Madison study included social scientists, an education researcher, and a school district leader. They weren’t convinced that simply missing school was the cause of the low achievement for the children with unexcused absences. So they looked into other differences unrelated to school attendance. They found that those factors—things like health condition, family income and education, and prior academic achievement—explained 88% of the relationship between having 18 unexcused absences and low test scores. In other words, the unexcused absences were “a powerful signal of how those out-of-school challenges affect children’s academic progress.” The researchers suggested that instead of putting additional pressure on parents, schools reach out with offers of support and provide additional resources to help those families and children with whatever is getting in the way—whether that’s transportation, housing, food, economic hardship, or medical issues. A helping hand from technology Two-way communication via an automated AI texting platform can help schools respond effectively to unexcused absences. Rather than simply reminding parents of how many days their student has missed, it can be programmed to query families of chronically absent children about their well-being. As families respond, the chatbot can provide appropriate resources and responses based on information that’s already part of its automated knowledge base. Importantly, platforms like AllHere can handle inquiries from families at any time of the day or night—making them a reliable, consistent source of support in times of need. When an incoming text message from a family contains a priority topic or a question the chatbot can’t answer, it’s sent to a designated staff member for a response. This helps educators and administrators prioritize the highest-impact communication with families who need it the most. AllHere’s innovative, novel, and evidence-based solution is proven to increase student participation in school, reduce the dropout rate, and build school engagement with students and families. Learn more about how it can help you address unexcused absences—and the challenges they signal.

As the two-year anniversary of the pandemic approaches, many school districts continue to grapple with consistent, timely communication about COVID-19. Even basic best practices—like asking parents how they want to communicate and ensuring translations are available for multilingual families—can fall by the wayside when messages need to get out asap. And ever-changing protocols and rules have stymied administrators’ efforts to build a comprehensive communications approach that maximizes transparency. Organizations like the National School Public Relations Association offer their members a wealth of online resources and toolkits to assist with crisis response. However, given administrators’ overwhelming to-do lists, time to research and implement complex plans can be hard to come by. Meanwhile, parents are frustrated with the ongoing challenges. In particular, they want to see improvements in: -The quality of information shared. -Timely updates on protocols and schedules. -Ease of access to accurate COVID-19 resources. -The ability to connect with someone from the district to receive information or ask questions and receive responses in a timely manner. Leveraging the power of mobile messaging and AI Districts struggling to crack the communication code will be heartened to hear that it is possible to incorporate mobile messaging powered by artificial intelligence quickly, without huge new investments or months of planning. Since our bots are available to understand families’ needs and provide them support whenever a school related issue arises (and in the last year, families have needed more support around navigating the pandemic than any other topic), several of our clients have been utilizing the AllHere platform to keep their communities in the know about COVID. The benefits they’ve seen from incorporating a custom chatbot include: -Reaching parents instantly via their preferred platform (SMS text) in their preferred language. -Two-way communication with instant, 24/7 responses when contacted by learning guardians, parents, and students. -Our bots are available to understand families’ needs and provide them support whenever a school related issue arises (and in the last year, families have needed more support around navigating the pandemic than any other topic). -A knowledge base that’s unique to each chatbot—which districts can update anytime with the most up-to-date information on school schedules, virtual learning access, community health resources, COVID protocols, and more. Some districts have temporarily pivoted their chatbots away from other priorities toward COVID communications during the 2021-22 school year, and they intend to return to those priorities once the pandemic eases. The AllHere support team is set up to accommodate such changes with no disruption or downtime. To learn more about how the AllHere platform can help your district crack the COVID communications code, connect with a member of our team.

From day one, AllHere has championed a movement to combat the underlying causes of chronic absenteeism. But as a pandemic continues to disrupt the status quo in our education system, we see a need to support students, parents, and educators beyond the scope of attendance intervention. In fact, schools across the country already use AllHere chatbots to proactively “nudge” families towards all sorts of improved outcomes including attendance, student engagement, support for mental and physical health, and much more. In our effort to drive student outcomes across their K-12 journey, we’ve built a powerful combination of technology and human-powered 24/7 support for K-12 families, we’re starting 2022 with a new look. Our new look communicates the expanded capabilities of AllHere to help families navigate all learning barriers: – We’ve swapped a clipboard for a chat bubble, representing the behaviorally intelligent chatbot that now supercharges how we serve schools and families. -The curved dotted line mirrors the non-linear path that we help families navigate throughout a child’s education. -The colors–including a refreshed blue and a palette of vibrant secondary colors–bring a new energy to our brand that is both inviting and trustworthy. -Most importantly, the “all” appears inside of the speech bubble, representing our expanded mission to remove all learning barriers inside and outside the classroom for K-12 families. AllHere is evolving to support students and families from registration all the way to graduation. Sign up for our newsletter to stay informed about new features launching on AllHere this year to support families throughout their journey to & through school.

The term “spring fever” is very real. Daylight hours increase, the weather warms, humans’ energy surges, and classrooms everywhere are hotbeds of restlessness and distraction. The dip in motivation during this predictable period is exacerbated by other factors, from the onset of allergy season to the stress brought on by standardized testing and end-of-course exams. Keeping students engaged is challenging enough in a normal springtime. But two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, educators and schools have their hands full balancing competing demands. Chronic absenteeism is a prime example. While it’s important to cultivate a culture of attendance, it’s also important for children to stay home if they have COVID symptoms. That’s why even districts that are aware of the spring decline and have prepared plans to combat it may need an extra boost this year via creative strategies and new tools. Tips for Preventing This Year’s Attendance Decline -Raise awareness among staff. Even if numbers from the past couple of years are wonky due to the pandemic, they will give teachers an idea of what to expect. -Communicate with families about the negative impacts of chronic absenteeism (missing more than 10% of the school year). -Check in regularly with parents or guardians whose students are at risk to make sure they aren’t experiencing barriers (like lack of access to healthcare for conditions such as asthma that tend to be worse in the spring) or aversions (such as academic struggles, ineffective discipline, or unwelcoming school climate). -Ask for a helping hand from the local community. Even small steps add up—like reminding providers to schedule medical appointments outside school hours whenever possible. -Assess and address students’ social-emotional well-being. In December 2021, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory that described young people’s mental health challenges as “unprecedented and uniquely hard to navigate.” -Make it fun to be in school. Schools often offer extra treats, study sessions, and other amenities around standardized testing season for students feeling anxiety about their performance. Consider ways to expand these and broaden their appeal. The AllHere Spring Support Pilot Program Starting next month, districts across the nation will address the seasonal drop in school attendance through the 2022 AllHere Spring Support Pilot Program. It’s an opportunity for districts to try this award-winning approach via free student licenses for up to six months. Pilot participants benefit from a secure-AI powered chatbot that automates two-way messaging. This convenient, accessible channel supports communication both at the district level and the individual level, with a combination of outgoing texts that are proven to help students attend and engage in school and incoming texts that close the feedback loop with families. The chatbot messaging is designed to align with the two most effective and least costly levels of Attendance Works’ three-tiered approach to getting and keeping students in school. These tiers of intervention focus on prevention-oriented supports (Tier 1) and personalized outreach (Tier 2). Enrollment ends soon. To learn more, visit www.allhere.com/spring-support.