Integrating a Focus on Attendance into Positive Behavior Interventions & Supports
in Columbus City Schools

In the 2021-2022 school year, Columbus City Schools (CCS) served nearly 47,000 pre-K-12 students. Of these students, nearly 30,000 were chronically absent, meaning that they missed at least 10% or more of instructional time for either excused or unexcused reasons. At the same time, the Ohio Department of Education added chronic absenteeism to the states’s accountability plan–reporting on both annual goals and improvement benchmarks at the state and district levels. In alignment with this plan, Columbus City Schools has set a goal to reduce chronic absenteeism in the district to 50% by 2026.

Part of CCS’ holistic approach to addressing chronic absenteeism included establishing a culture of shared accountability and integration with other student support systems. Upon conducting a comprehensive diagnostic process in partnership with Attendance Works to identify root causes for absenteeism within the district, and joining the Stay In The Game Network, CCS established a Centralized Attendance Team–a cross-departmental unit, composed of central office staff members and school-level administrators and staff–responsible for ensuring attendance support is aligned with other academic improvement strategies such as Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS).

The PBIS Team consists of building leader(s), School Social Workers, School Counselor, Teachers, Family Ambassadors, Nurse and or Community Partners. To ensure schools and district staff are equipped to integrate and implement evidence-based attendance practices, CCS delivers training for staff and has developed an attendance playbook with information on to use data to establish goals, tiered strategies and interventions, building effective school support teams, and clear roles and responsibilities. To integrate attendance strategies into existing systems and ensure a sustainable practice, PBIS teams incorporate a review of attendance, behavior and academic data and discuss the best way to integrate needed strategies into their existing twice monthly meetings.