Summer Learning Institute 2026

This presentation will provide a general overview of legal requirements and best practices for responding to chronic absenteeism and student truancy issues, including how to address compulsory education laws with a parent/guardian and understanding the role of child find obligations and mental health supports.  The presentation will also provide an update on new laws affecting how schools handle student truancy, including changes to truancy notification letters.

This session will present a strategic framework for reducing chronic absenteeism that not only improves student engagement, but also helps districts stabilize Average Daily Attendance (ADA) and protect revenue in a time of declining enrollment and rising costs. In one Central Valley school district, this approach resulted in a 31% reduction in chronic absenteeism at the elementary level within 18 months. In a second Central Valley district, chronic absenteeism declined to 7% during the 2025–26 school year. These results were achieved through a proactive, data-driven system that combined actionable attendance data, early warning indicators, and targeted intervention strategies to identify barriers to attendance early and respond before absenteeism became entrenched. As districts face enrollment losses and inflation that continues to outpace COLA, improving attendance is one of the most immediate and practical ways to strengthen ADA, preserve funding, and maintain critical student programs and services.
This session will also highlight how districts can leverage real-time attendance systems such as Ed-Link, developed by Chris Gocke, to monitor attendance patterns, identify students at risk for chronic absenteeism, and implement timely interventions that improve student outcomes while recovering lost revenue. Participants will explore flexible attendance recovery strategies, including One-Day Independent Study, Short-Term Independent Study, before- and after-school attendance recovery opportunities, and Saturday academies. These approaches allow districts to recover instructional time, re-engage students and families, and maximize ADA in a strategic and student-centered way. Grounded in Dr. David Diehl’s field experience and informed by longitudinal research on early predictors of disengagement, this presentation demonstrates how data-informed attendance systems and targeted interventions implemented before middle school can improve attendance outcomes while helping districts respond to the financial pressures of declining enrollment and inflationary costs.