We are excited to announce that the Attendance Awareness Campaign (AAC) kickoff webinar, Lay a Foundation, broke a record with 2,000+ registrations. In addition, so far the webinar recording has been played 827 times!

Attendance Works has developed four webinars for the 2019 AAC. This year’s webinar series will emphasize how schools and communities work together to improve student attendance under the theme, We Belong in School!

The theme recognizes that students are more likely to attend school if they know they are safe, connected, supported and engaged in the classroom. We are using the word “we” also to recognize the value of creating partnerships to address barriers to attendance.

Save the dates! We’ve scheduled each webinar on a Thursday. Here is the complete list of webinars for Attendance Awareness 2019:

• March 21: Lay a Foundation: Engage Families to Address Chronic Absence in the Early Years, explored attendance during students’ very first years in school. Find the recording.
• May 16: Nurture Dreams: Ensure Students Feel Safe, Supported, Connected and Engaged, will consider the secondary school years and how to develop a safe and supportive climate with teens. Register.
• August 8: Open Doors: Create a Healthy School Climate, will feature speakers who will talk about creating a healthy and positive learning environment for all grades.
• September 10: A Place Where We Belong: Improving Conditions for Learning, will present our September brief and examine how we can address barriers to attendance in school and in the community. We’ll also walk through a new chronic absence data map developed by The Hamilton Project at Brookings Institution.

If you can’t make it on the webinar date, Attendance Works will create a discussion guide, and a PDF with slides from the speaker presentations for each webinar. We’ll also post the webinar recording a few days after the event.

We hope to see you in all four webinars! Watch for the registration link to each webinar in our newsletters, on Twitter and Facebook, and be sure to sign up to receive regular updates and resources.

Please note: Due to the high level of interest in this series, we are likely to exceed the webinar room capacity of 500! Once you register you will receive the webinar recording, PowerPoint slides and other materials whether you attend or not. You might consider organizing a separate session to watch with a group using the recording and discussion guide. Guests are welcome to log in 15 minutes prior to the beginning of the webinar.