Partner Spotlight: Pflugerville ISD, Texas

Background: 

Located just outside of Austin, Texas, Pflugerville ISD serves over 25,000 K–12 students across 35 schools and 2 alternative campuses. Like many districts nationwide, they’ve faced rising levels of chronic absenteeism. Rising to the challenge, Director of Student Affairs Dr. Amanda Castro knew to get the results the district desired, they’d need to make some big shifts and take a new approach. 

The Challenge: Need for Better Data, Stronger Family-School Partnerships, and More Effective Communication

Heading into the 2023–24 school year, Pflugerville ISD was confronting multiple roadblocks:

• Incomplete and underutilized data: Teachers were not consistently taking attendance, and principals weren’t using data as much as they could to strategically inform their work. Even if they were to implement more data-driven efforts, the available data was difficult to decipher and surface-level, as the district was only tracking Average Daily Attendance, which often masks a high chronic absenteeism rate.
• Disconnected family relationships: Many staff members felt that families didn’t value school, and many families perceived district outreach as punitive. There was a big opportunity to deepen understanding between educators and families that everyone truly cared about student growth and success. 
• Communications landing flat: Outreach often focused on truancy and consequences rather than offering information on the student’s attendance, why it was important, and where they could find support.

With the conviction that “Attendance tells a story, let’s make it a good one,” Dr. Castro was determined to upgrade attendance work at Pflugerville ISD to build a culture of attendance and bring more students back into class every day.  After all, as Dr. Castro rightly points out, “We can have the best academic innovation going on in our campuses, we can have the best programs. But if we don't have our kids in seats, then they're not getting to utilize any of that.”

The Solution: Robust Data, Personalized Communications, and Expanded Family Support

To turn attendance around, Pflugerville ISD rolled out several new strategies throughout the 2023–24 and 24-25 school years, including a partnership with EveryDay Labs. “Doing that has been such a game changer,” Dr. Castro shared. “We're able to access data in real time: the dashboard gives attendance teams the ability to drill down into our student needs, and the attendance team isn't building spreadsheets of students that they need to address.” 

Here’s what else changed:

• Taking attendance outreach to the next level with the EveryDay Platform: Providing actionable data analytics, trends, and pattern recognition, the EveryDay Platform supported the team in numerous ways. “One of the biggest game changers,” shared Dr. Castro, “was being able to identify the students at the beginning of the year who were chronically absent the year before and then put intentional positive supports at the beginning of the year.” 
• More effective MTSS work unlocked: Instant insights into which attendance tiers students were in enabled staff to quickly implement intervention groups and manage their progress. The platform made it easier to spend more time on proactive attendance work to significantly move the needle on attendance: “what we started to do was to focus on our at-risk and moderately chronic students, and get them back on track for more regular attendance,” Dr. Castro explains. 
• Proactive, personalized attendance communications: Families of students who were or at risk of becoming chronically absent began receiving evidence-based letters and texts that informed them of their student’s current attendance and provided support through connections to district and community resources intended to make it easier to get to school every day, including transportation, wellness, and food distribution. 

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• ‍Meeting families where they are: Whether due to job conflicts, transportation challenges, or prior negative school experiences, it wasn’t easy for all families to come into school, making relationship building all the more challenging. That’s why Dr. Castro began hosting family support sessions at local apartment complexes, making it easier for caregivers to engage and ask questions in a welcoming and convenient environment.

The Results: Real Attendance Gains, Stronger Relationships, and Capacity for New Initiatives

The outcomes speak for themselves. Among students enrolled in the pilot program:

• 66% improved their attendance
• 22% moved from chronically absent to not chronically absent
• 85% of at-risk students stayed on track and did not become chronically absent

With better tools and family-centered communication strategies in place, Pflugerville ISD found something else: capacity. “With this partnership, we were able to also focus more on the community engagement piece,” shared Dr. Castro.

Teams had more time and energy to plan new high-impact, joyful attendance initiatives, including:

• Attendance task force that includes teachers, students, pre-k coordinators, principals, district level folks. Dr. Castro elaborates: “we're all going to come together, use EveryDay Labs, use all of our partnerships and really address chronic absenteeism for the next year. It's a team sport. It takes a village.”
• Multicultural events to boost community connection
• Building partnerships with local sports teams and businesses to welcome more students from the community into Pflugerville ISD
• Incentives for principals, recognizing their hard work with grants to use in their own budgets that are tied to improved attendance rates. 

Dr. Castro concludes: “We started with seven schools and then we expanded to nine schools and next year we're expanding to 15 schools. We are hoping to then move this district wide as we continue to see the impact that it's making with our students.”   

Curious about the transformations you could see with an EveryDay Labs partnership? Reach out and we’d be happy to share more! 

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