Our theme this year, Showing Up Together! spoke to the importance of joining together to address the devasting impacts from interrupted learning and economic stress large numbers of families and students have experienced since 2019. We highlighted the value of partnerships between communities, schools, students and families to build and implement long-term plans to address exceptionally high levels of absenteeism.

Our updated the Count Us In! toolkit offered schools, districts and community partners resources and tips to explain how being in school supports students’ social, emotional and physical well-being while providing opportunities to learn and achieve. It includes approaches to help engage students and families as partners to ensure students get to school every day possible.

Showing up in school for everyone continues to be challenging. Yet we saw that the Attendance Awareness Campaign during September was celebrated by schools and communities across the country. We saw additional efforts to engage students and families to address attendance barriers. We are in awe of these efforts and more carried out by teachers, staff, education leaders and community partners!

Here are a few of the metrics we’ve gathered from AAC 2023:

• 13,027 people registered for one of our Attendance Awareness Campaign webinars
• 46,000 people are signed up for our newsletters
• 10 attendance awareness updates emailed (go here to see them all)
• 104 national and state level partners disseminated information to their constituents
• 5,395 news stories and blog posts featured student attendance issues or Attendance Awareness Month in July, August and September.
• 641,217 website page views in July, August and September.
• 1,625 tweets featured the #schooleveryday hashtag in July, August and September, generating 7.3 million impressions.

Here are a few more highlights:

Four Attendance Awareness Campaign webinars:

1. Belonging and Engagement: The Keys to Showing Up, March 30
2. Relationships All Year Round: Nurturing Showing Up, May 10
3. A Welcoming and Healthy Return to School: Ensuring Showing Up, August 9
4. Sustaining Success: Investing in Showing Up, September 27

We owe a special thank you to this year’s Attendance Awareness Campaign corporate sponsors (EveryDay Labs, Kaiser Permanente Thriving Schools, RaaWeeK12, and School Technology Associates). Their investment helps make it possible for us to provide strategies and materials at no cost to thousands of practitioners throughout the country!

Join the Campaign!! Sign up for our newsletter to get regular updates about the Attendance Awareness Campaign in your email inbox.