Hi, all. My name is Jesse Roy, and I'm an Education Strategy Director here at PowerSchool. Thanks for joining us for what should be a great conversation today with Gary Zoll from Seaford School District in Delaware, around Seaford's attendance story over the last couple of years and the great gains they've made to get students back in seats. Before I get started, and I introduce Gary officially, I just wanna point you to some features of the console that you're viewing me through right now. So it's pretty customizable. You can make things bigger and smaller. You can turn captions off and on. We've got some resources for you linked that you can click in and download and please take a look at. You can also ask questions throughout. So, if you have something you're wondering that you wanna plug into the chat, please do, and hopefully we'll be able to get to it. But with that, let me move us along and introduce Gary Zoll, the Director of Student Services at Seaford School District, and one of our great partners here at PowerSchool. Gary, would you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your role and about Seaford School District? Like you said, my name is Gary Zoll, Director of Student Services. 24 years in education. I spent 15 years in a classroom as mainly a social studies teacher in grades 6 through 12. Spent three years as an assistant principal, four years as a principal, and then this is my second year as the Director of Student Services for the district. Work in Seaford School District, very small district in Southern Delaware, around 3,500 students. We have four elementary schools, one middle school and one high school. Elementary school is roughly 400-450 students each, and then the high school, about 900. Rural area, just in Delaware. Nothing special about us. Well, thanks, Gary, and thanks for taking the time, particularly as I know, you know, you're in the summer part of your year. But, you know, before we move along, and I told you I was gonna do this, I wanna point out, so this awesome picture of this excited little girl receiving her diploma, I imagine at the end of some primary year or her primary years, and the previous picture, and then some of the ones to come. I tell you, I spent some time, you know, going through Seaford's site. I spent some time on your social media accounts, and I was really just blown away by the number and quality of images and videos. I remember, I think I said to you, I said, "Seaford is a place I'd like to send my kids." Like, a welcoming, amazing community, all sort of spelled out in these images and videos. So, like, great to feature these throughout, and hats off to your folks who do that work for the district. Yeah, we have amazing staff. Our PIO is awesome. Actually, that's from our pre-K graduation, happens right at the beginning of June. And it's always a big part of our community. Yeah, I wasn't even sure if it fit the slide. I was just like, "You gotta get this kid up on screen," so, all right. So let's get into to sort of the conversation at hand here, and I'll start by sort of talking through the national landscape around attendance. I know that I'm really preaching to the choir, you know, in terms of our audience today, because I think this is something folks are feeling in districts across the country. But what that's looked like in the last few years, sort of spelled out in numbers, is that nationwide chronic absenteeism surged from around 15% nationally in 2018, which, you know, we'll call pre-pandemic, to 28% in 2022, and I think my understanding now is we're down to about 26%. So a slow improvement, but still, you know, numbers that I think have been hard for districts to manage. You know, accompanying that, sort of during that same timeframe, is national average daily attendance, or ADA, dropped from 93.4% to 90%. And when I first saw this statistic, you know, I went, "You know, it's the difference between an A and an A minus," but it's really not. It's a 50% increase in student non-attendance. And when you look at, you know, a 4% swing, let's say, in a district of 3,500, like yours or district of 10,000, you know, that's hundreds of students a day. So, you know, that's what it's looked like. Let me ask you, Gary, you know, how does this, how has this sort of mirrored what you've experienced in your staff and students and families have experienced in Seaford, sort of during the pandemic and shortly thereafter? Yeah, I mean, it mirrors it exactly. Everywhere in Southern Delaware, it's been tough. Well, that 95%-90%, in a sense, I mean, 90% daily attendance seems good, like 90% of kids are here, but you're right, that means one out of every ten- Right ... are missing. So in a classroom of 20 or a classroom of 30, that's two or three kids that aren't there, that you then have to catch up or figure out what you can do to get them to make up the missed work and that missed time. And that missed time is crucial, not only for academics, but also the social piece of what school can be and just having students there and being a part of a community. Yeah, and let me ask sort of more granularly about that. You know, both from sort of an outcomes perspective, and I would imagine logistically and operationally, you know, this has presented real challenges, I think probably for you in the central office, for your building staff, and for your families. What have been, what are some of the more sort of tangible, you know, challenges that you all experienced that accompanied, you know, these decreases in regular student attendance? I mean, lots of challenges. Like I said, the teachers catching students up is one of the tough parts, and the teachers have obviously being frustrated and trying to figure out how to catch those students up, and if you have one kid miss today, another kid miss tomorrow, kid miss the next day, it's just you can't develop that continuity for lessons. Yeah ... everything moving forward. But then, I mean, just also in Delaware, just like most all states, has an attendance process, right? And so working through that with the state and Truancy Court and all those things, too, the more students you have in that, the more things you're trying to do to figure it out. And that is time and money and a lot of things spent that are just trying to figure out how to get students to school because we know it's important. And I imagine even for your folks, you know, who collect daily attendance, who communicate with parents to try to find out where a particular student is, you know, when those numbers go up—you know, those seemingly quick tasks, when you multiply it times 1,000 kids, 200 kids, whatever it happens to be in a district, become pretty, pretty serious lists. Yeah, and time-wise, a lot of it's our secretaries that fall onto it, and the more students, like you said, that are out, the more they're trying to figure out, too, and work with parents and work with processes that they take time away from other things that they're doing in the school. And also, I'll point to, you know, I, I spend a lot of time supporting, you know, our attendance group here at PowerSchool and, and spend some time with the research. And so the predictive power of attendance for so many school and even life outcomes is, is really pretty staggering. You know, from students reading at grade level by third grade, when we sort of make that magical transition from basic reading skill development to really reading to understand and to write, to, you know, it being a predictor of graduation to even incarceration. You know, and I imagine you saw some of the precursors of that. Maybe you, you mentioned, you know, the struggles it created to differentiate for kids who miss time. Yeah, and kind of funny, our biggest—one of our biggest areas of chronic absenteeism is kindergarten. Yeah. Because it's a lot of times, it's their first time in school. They're around germs for the first time. Right. It's also parents sometimes who have never sent their students away. Yeah, we're training the parents, too. Yeah, right. We have some sniffles, and they want to keep them home when they could- Yeah ... be at school and doing it. But like you said, you fall behind that reading aspect of it, especially by third grade, and you get to sixth grade, it just, it magnifies it. And get to high school, and it magnifies it even more. And the farther you fall, you fall behind, the harder those classes become, and then it is harder to graduate. Yeah. Well, so let's move us along from sort of setting the stage here into the ways we've made improvements. You know, we'll kind of turn the corner towards the positive. Another awesome image from the good folks in your district. So I've shared with you, I have seen this done before in the schools I've worked in, you know, where we spell out the initials of the building, you know, the FMS or the EUSD, whatever it happens to be. This is the first time I've seen the mascot created. So for folks, these are students, you know, it's an aerial shot of students creating the Seaford mascot, which I assume is a blue jay, Gary. Yes. I saw this, and I was like, "Yep, that's another one. It does not fit the slide, but it's got to be in here somewhere. Yeah, impressive. At one of our elementary schools, they spent basically a whole week, I think it was three or four days, designing the blue jay and laying out mulch so they'd know exactly where to put things. And the students, I mean, the artist is the one who came up with the idea, obviously, and does this in other places, but the students were the ones that did the work and then were a part of that picture and make it look the way it did. It turned out even better than we thought it was going to. Very cool. And I'll just continue to bring us, you know, in off on tangents, you know, continue the conversation. Well, also, so, you know, we sort of set the table on what the need is looked like nationally and the challenge and how, you know, Seaford has married some of that and what it's meant for you all. Now let's turn the corner to sort of how you've addressed, you know, some of these needs and met some of these challenges. And I'll start by pointing to, you know, this beautiful sort of MTSS-style pyramid from our friends over at Attendance Works. And particularly that bottom tier, which is creating, you know, positive conditions for learning as a way, you know, a welcoming school environments, climates, cultures, as a way to promote attendance. You know, creating places where students and families want to be, so to speak. And also, you know, when you consider absenteeism or, or maybe just generally, what efforts has Seaford made in the following or the, or the past few years to, to focus on that, that level of support to create those positive conditions for learning? I mean, I will say we have amazing principals here that do tremendous jobs in just making their schools welcoming. That picture, like you said, is just one of... Yes, it's something that also can take time away from curriculum, but when kids see that final product and, and kids see that, that work ethic- Yeah ... that turned into, it's, it's huge. But all of our principals had, have and come up with different ways, and a lot of it's working with students and getting student voice in, of what's going to get them excited to come to school. Elementary school, that's right behind my office here, every year, they do this big, gigantic water day, where they bring, at the end of the year, bring, bring slides in, and, and the kids get to go out and just have fun. And I think that's a, that's a key is, kids want to come to school when, when school is fun. And if you put those fun things in and, and make that a part of the other thing, you're going to get more kids involved. So with PBIS and lots of different ideas and innovations and just time, our principals have done a great job of making our schools a welcoming environment. Yeah, and I think pointing back at that research, right? You know, you talk about the time spent and, you know, oh, we could be, you know, drilling math facts during that time or whatever it is, but, you know, the stitch in time saves nine. Yeah. You know, research bears out that, again, not just for attendance, but for so many different outcomes, promoting those positive conditions for learning and school climate yield better results, including academic outcomes. Yeah, and our principals, and, I mean, one of the things that I will say we do for our principals is we give them a little bit of autonomy, like, each one comes up with a different way. One of our K-2 elementary schools, they have the house team system that works tremendously well for them, but that's only going to work if your principal buys into and believes in it. Right. So she's the only one that does it, but it works, and we support her with it. Some of the ones, obviously, they all come up with kind of different ways to respond to it, but it all works for them because they make it work for their school. Yeah. So I want to bring in the parent piece of that a little bit because, you know, obviously, you're creating, you know, these wonderful, engaging environments for kids. How do you keep or increase parents as partners, you know, in what you're trying to do? I mean, I think part of it kind of goes back to the attendance. So we... Part of the issue we wanted to solve, and I, I mean, I took this job two years ago, is figuring out why students aren't coming to school. Mm-hmm. The only way you can do that is by talking to the parents, going out and doing home visits, bringing them in, trying to have conversations with them. I think that's the key is, you're talking to them and communicating, so they know that you're a partner, and they want to also be a part of that school, and that you're not looking at this as punitive. I think far too many times, attendance, the way laws are written and even the way some of our policies are written, it turns into a punitive thing. And you got to get away from that because if it's punitive, parents aren't going to respond.... and you have to make it into something, how can we support you? Or what, what is going on that we can offer you something different? Some of our kids aren't coming to school because they're watching their younger children, or they're late every day 'cause of that. And until you find that out, and then work with them to find resources, that's the only way you're gonna fix that problem. I'm really glad you said that. We had a conversation, what must be almost a year now, with Dave Hersh from Character Lab, and Dave was quick to point out that, you know, attendance is not sort of a one size fits all problem or solution. You know, it's not about folks who don't understand the value of school. It's not about folks who, you know, are lazy or delinquent or, you know, whatever a preconceived notion might be of why folks don't come to school regularly. It can be about transportation, it can be about childcare, it can be about work, you know, for high school students. It can be about bullying, school climate, and culture. You know, it's just like with our kids, you know, when we engage in these MTSS processes, it's not a one size fits all for our families either. And to your point, kind of doing that deep dive and engaging with them proactively and regularly around what their needs are, feels like really the only way to kinda solve this. Yeah. And one of... I mean, one of the things, kinda speaking just of that, we also hired two family interventionists in Southern Delaware, two populations that are growing significantly, our Hispanic population and our Haitian Creole population. Mm. We hired a Haitian Creole family interventionist and a Hispanic family interventionist, because one of the things that when we talk to those parents, just that comfortability of just talking to somebody, and if they find someone that can speak their language, it goes a lot farther than if we have to use a language line that's just so impersonal. Yep. Yeah, that's a really important consideration. You also pointed to the value of making that engagement positive, and, you know, you look at when you talk about, like, PBIS or PBS and those types of things, you talk about like that 4-to-1 or 5-to-1 ratio of positivity to negativity that we apply to our kids, but it matters with you and me and our spouses and everyone else, too. Yes including your parents, especially some parents who maybe themselves did not have a great school experience. Yeah, we try. That's, I mean, that's one thing we rewrote, so we have attendance letters, which I'm sure every school has, that you send out when students miss 5 days or 10 days. And we wanted to make that 5-day one a positive message of, "Hey, we noticed that your student has missed this time. What can we do to help? What can we do to support?" And then give them some statistics, like you said before, just what happens and what does it mean when your student is chronically absent. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's continue to talk a little bit about what efforts have looked like in Seaford. I'm gonna bring up our next slide here. And so I'm gonna point to, you know, some of the work we partnered around, Gary, in the past couple of years. What happened is that working with Seaford and with Johns Hopkins University, PowerSchool, you know, launched a study of our attendance intervention tool in Seaford School District and the impacts that it did or did not have in your buildings that adopted the solution. So on the left here, you'll just see sort of some bullets of kind of what that study looked like. I'll point to a couple of results, and then I'll ask you, Gary, to kind of give some context to it. But, you know, the study concluded last semester, and Johns Hopkins uncovered statistically significant increases in average daily attendance in those buildings that used our tool, as well as decreases in chronic absenteeism in those same treatment schools. But via the numbers to your side, Gary, what have those improvements, kind of the counterpoint to our- to a couple of slides ago, what have those improvements meant for students and staff and families in your district? What have you seen outside of attendance itself that this has impacted? Yeah, I mean, culture, just in even number of referrals, discipline referrals, that are coming in. I think it goes back to the same thing, it's just that positive spin on what education can be. Kids are excited to come to school. They want to come to school, they're gonna come and do the right thing. But also, I mean, our test scores, I mean, as crazy as that might sound sometimes, and that always about education, one of the things we always look for is how are kids doing on the test, and are they improving? And we have seen growth in test scores, especially at our elementary levels, and I think it's gonna start trickling up as the time goes on. As we get more and more of these students on that right track and parents on that right track, I think it's gonna be a huge help to us. Have you noticed, sort of maybe not quantifiable, but observable, sort of impacts on staff? You know, just the workloads, the things they're responding to, the amount of differentiation or types of conversations they're having. Has that been something you felt? It's a good question. I can't say that we've looked into it. That's something we probably should look into more. Yes. Can't say we have, in that sense of looking at it. We just, we just got the results of our parent survey back, so that might be one thing we can look at, too. Mm. 'Cause we haven't had a chance to really look at that data yet. And that's a teacher survey, and parent survey goes with it, so that's something we have to look at in more detail. Now, since the study wrapped, you know, so it's been, you know, another full semester, what has the district seen sort of since sustained or continued improvement? Are the numbers continuing to trend in a direction that you're excited about? Yes, very excited about. I mean, every one of our elementary schools is either close to or over 95% daily attendance, which is probably better than pre-pandemic levels. I'd have to go look back because I wasn't in this role, then, so I don't have those numbers. But it has to be, you know, close to or better than pre-pandemic levels. And our middle school and high school... Our high school for the last three years has always been below 90%, and this year we're at 91%, which is a huge increase, and the middle school is trending upwards, too, at 92.5% daily attendance, I think. And then, the even better part of that is just the significant chronic absenteeism. Our elementary schools, of the four... seven was the highest number of kids that were chronically absent at any of our elementary schools. Out of 450, that's huge. That's incredible. I mean, that's gotta be way beyond what we're seeing nationwide right now. Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, it's 1% really, of the kids that are coming to school, are chronically absent. And we use it basically, if they've missed 14 days of school, is what we kinda consider it, 'cause it's about the 10% mark. Wow, that's really exciting. You know, I'm sure for you and your staff, and also, you know, what it means for your kids and your families. That's great stuff. Yeah, I mean, like I said, part of it, we wanna grow with it too, and continue to talk. The things that we're looking at as a district, obviously, you know, looking at the data and figuring out who those students are and what they do. But then taking it and striving to meet those parents. Like one of the things we talked about before, too, mental health obviously is a huge proponent of this and a huge cause of some of the attendance issues. So one of the things we're working with our state, trying to write some grants and find some other money to bring more mental health people into the building, so that way, parents don't have to, one, find a way to get them there, and two, take them out of school to do it. So if it's right in the building, they can get it done right there. Right. And then right back to that same, you know, conversation we just had about, you know, this is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Right. You know, it's an all hands on deck, you know, wraparound. You're really getting to the root of what each individual needs and finding ways to provide it. Yeah, that's the key. Yeah. So, Gary, I mean, you know, really appreciative of the partnership. I'm really excited about sort of the Seaford story, and, and I appreciate you sharing it. So quickly, you know, to our audience, you should be seeing a poll that is gonna pop up on your screen in just a minute, and basically just ask you, you know, are you interested in learning a little bit more about either the attendance conversation that we've had with Seaford and, and what they've done to be successful, or the PowerSchool solution specifically, that was implemented in Seaford Schools? So if you are interested in follow-up, you know, please indicate as such in the poll, and we'll be glad to continue the conversation with you. I'm gonna briefly look at our chat to see if we have any questions or if we've answered all. It looks like all have been answered. And with that, Gary, thank you so much. As before, it's been a pleasure to partner with you, and I'm looking forward to continuing. Thank you to our audience and our attendees, and, you know, have a great rest of your summers.