This year we are calling on communities to Team Up for Attendance! as we celebrate the sixth Attendance Awareness Month Campaign. Be sure to view the Count Us! In Toolkit, and look for the Key Messages for 2018. Download new badges, and find ideas and resources for your campaign. Join with us and more than 70 national partners working to expand on last year's success and bring more communities into our movement by signing up for updates.

The 2018 webinar series highlights the value of using a community-wide approach to strengthen student attendance. Our next free webinar, Team up for Attendance: Working Together Matters, is on Tuesday, May 8, 2018, 11am (PST) / 2 pm (EST). Register now.

We need your help to get the word out! Send this description to colleagues, insert it in newsletters, or share our social media messages (below) about the webinar.

Wondering how to begin planning for Attendance Awareness Month this fall? We've laid out a plan with suggested actions and resources. This month you can plan a meeting and agree on activities with our materials for meetings. It's also a good time to recruit partners to support the work. See Who Can Help.

We've developed an online, interactive series of courses so you and your colleagues can learn how to improve attendance in your school. Created in partnership with TeachingReady, the Teaching Attendance Curriculum offers knowledge, guidance and resources for principals, teachers and school support staff to help you reduce chronic absences in grades K-12th.  We released the first of three modules on March 28th .  Register here.

The Cleveland Metropolitan School District's citywide campaign: Get to School - You Can Make It! significantly reduced chronic absence from 35 to 29 percent from 2015 to 2017. Led by CMSD CEO Eric Gordon and an attendance implementation team, the campaign has invested in a strong foundation of social and emotional learning practices and engaging community partners, including the Cleveland Browns. The campaign was highlighted by PBSNewsHour in " Empty Chairs."

The Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk published a two-part special issue: Combatting Chronic Absenteeism: Bridging Research and Policy. Issue one focuses on tracking data and measuring the effects of absenteeism; issue two explores efforts by schools and other stakeholders for reducing school absenteeism. Guest Editors Michael Gottfried (UC Santa Barbara) and Stacy Ehrlich (U of Chicago) edited papers by researchers with expertise in absenteeism from pK-12. Find the research.

The National Student Attendance, Engagement, and Success Center (NSAESC) is sponsoring an National Convening on May 9-10, 2018. FLIPPING ESSA: Achieving Success through Student Engagement, will take place in Baltimore, MD. Join us! Attendance Works will facilitate several sessions. Read our blog series about ESSA and Register for the National Convening.

A special thanks to our Attendance Awareness Month Campaign corporate sponsors for their commitment to help ensure that every child is in school every day. Their investment makes it possible for us to provide you with free strategies and materials:

We are delighted to welcome three national organizations, the latest to join the Attendance Awareness Campaign 2018!

Check out our  partner page, and contact Catherine Cooney, catherine@attendanceworks.org, if your organization would like to join and help spread the word about attendance.