Districtwide practice
System Improvement Strategies
These strategies describe how WUSD strengthens attendance response across all sites: one common process that makes the work staff already do more effective, more consistent, and easier to carry forward.
01. Early identification
Identify changes before severe chronic absenteeism develops.
02. Pre-referral intervention
Perform reasonable barrier identification and intervention before SST / MTSS team referral.
03. Student and family voice
Include the people closest to the attendance barrier.
04. Barrier-based intervention
Match intervention to the actual cause of absence whenever possible.
05. Short-cycle monitoring
Review intervention response quickly enough to make adjustments.
06. Case ownership
Assign clear responsibility for follow-through.
07. Strong referral quality
Do not forward attendance counts alone. Forward the intervention story.
08. Multidisciplinary coordination
Use SST / MTSS team for complex needs requiring multiple perspectives.
09. SART/SARB continuity
Carry information forward rather than requiring families and staff to repeatedly recreate the history.
10. Re-engagement
Recognize improvement, maintain successful supports, and create a clear pathway out of intensive intervention.
11. System-level barrier analysis
Aggregate barrier data across schools to identify district problems: transportation, scheduling, academic disengagement, basic needs, family routines, school connection. If the same barrier appears repeatedly across many students, it may be a system issue rather than an individual student issue.
12. Proactive planning
When barriers are predictable, address them before attendance declines: seasonal mobility, recurring transportation problems, known family work cycles, transitions between schools, return from extended absence, previous-year attendance patterns.
Guiding philosophy
These statements apply at every tier and at every site.
- Attendance concerns should be addressed at the lowest appropriate level of intervention.
- Students do not automatically move through every tier.
- Successful intervention should prevent unnecessary escalation.
- The multidisciplinary site team should not be where the barrier is first discovered.
- Use the site-level team structure that fits the barrier and local practice — SST, MTSS, or an equivalent team. Not every student must pass through every team before receiving the next level of support.
- A contact is not automatically an intervention.
- A required attendance notice may occur alongside intervention, but it does not replace intervention.
- Every intervention should identify the barrier it is intended to address.
- Every intervention needs an owner and a review date.
- If an intervention was not implemented, do not automatically conclude that it failed.
- Unknown is a valid barrier status. Do not guess.
- Student and family voice should inform attendance intervention whenever appropriate.
- Support and accountability can exist together.
- The goal is re-engagement, not simply referral completion.
Common barrier categories
Used consistently across sites so barrier data can be aggregated districtwide.
Unknown is a valid barrier status. Recording Unknown and continuing to gather information is better practice than guessing.