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Before Absence Becomes a Pattern: Using Family Engagement to Prevent Chronic Absenteeism
Monday, October 19, 2026 @ 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm EDT
Before Absence Becomes a Pattern: Using Family Engagement to Prevent Chronic Absenteeism
Presented by Odetta Smith, Ed.D., Experienced Educator, Director of Innovation & Life Readiness, EL | Federal Programs | Library Services | Personalized Learning | Virtual Learning, Pattonville School District (MO); Ashish Chaturvedi, Founder, School Diary®; and Bill Bass, Past President of the Board of Directors at ISTE, Experienced Educator, Parkway School District (MO)
Moderated by Ellen Cleary, Experienced Educator, Senior Strategist, Advancing Global EDU, Inc.
Sponsored by School Diary®
Learn more about earning a CE certificate and our accessibility features.
Chronic absenteeism rarely begins with a single missed day. It builds through patterns that schools often see only after they have already taken hold: a student skipping the same day each week, missing more classes after a break, or falling into an attendance dip that tracks with a change at home. By the time attendance data reflects a problem, the window to intervene early has often already closed.
This edLeader Panel gives district leaders a practical framework for closing that gap. Learn how to identify early attendance patterns using data that already exists across their systems, including attendance, academic performance, health, and behavior records, and how to connect those patterns to timely, two-way family engagement before absence becomes chronic.
Learning objectives include:
- Recognize the early behavioral and data signals that precede chronic absenteeism, rather than relying on threshold-based alerts that arrive too late
- Understand how combining attendance data with academic, health, and behavior signals produces earlier and more accurate risk detection
- Apply a tiered family engagement model that matches the level of outreach to the severity of the pattern, from a simple nudge to coordinated family support
- Address language and access barriers that prevent some families from responding to school communication, using two-way, multilingual outreach as a core part of the strategy
Key topics include pattern-based early warning systems, cross-domain data integration, tiered communication and intervention design, and the role of multilingual, two-way communication in reaching families who are otherwise hard to engage.
Viewers can learn a framework they can apply directly in their districts: a way to move from reactive attendance monitoring to proactive family engagement, using data leaders may already have but are not yet connecting. This recorded edLeader Panel is designed for K-12 superintendents, assistant superintendents, attendance teams, family engagement leaders, and communications directors who want to shift from responding to absenteeism after it becomes a pattern to preventing it before it does.
About the Presenters
With 24 years in public education, including 15 years in leadership, Odetta Smith, Ed.D., has built her career around challenging traditional approaches to teaching and learning and creating meaningful opportunities for students. Her experience spans the classroom, school administration, and district leadership, serving as a teacher, assistant principal, and district-level administrator. She currently serves as the Director of Innovation and Life Readiness for the Pattonville School District in St. Louis County, Missouri, where she leads initiatives in personalized and competency-based learning, college and career readiness, and educational innovation. Her leadership brings together instructional vision, systems thinking, and a commitment to ensuring students have the skills, experiences, and opportunities to thrive beyond graduation. At the heart of her work is a simple belief: education should not only prepare students for what comes next, but empower them to shape their own futures.
Ashish Chaturvedi is the Founder and CEO of School Diary®, a K-12 school communication and operations platform used by more than 1,100 schools and 450,000 families across 13 countries, including the United States, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Oman, Kenya, Tanzania, Hungary, Nepal, and the Philippines. Ashish founded School Diary® in 2012 and took the product live in 2015, building it in India as a platform designed for global scale. School Diary® helps schools manage family engagement, student information, attendance, and daily operations through one integrated platform, with multilingual support across more than 200 languages. Before School Diary®, Ashish spent over 25 years across global enterprises including AT&T, Verizon, Infosys, and Procter & Gamble, in telecom, retail, and enterprise technology. Working across 13 countries, Ashish has watched one pattern repeat: schools are changing because parent expectations changed faster than schools did. He writes about this shift in School Diary® Field Notes.
Bill Bass is an award-winning educator who currently serves as the Innovation Coordinator for Instructional Technology, Information, Library Media, and Federal Programs in the Parkway School District in St. Louis, MO, where he leads the district library program, instructional technology, grants, and innovation. He is Past President of the ISTE Board of Directors and has served on a number of educational governance and advisory boards. During his 20+ year career in education, he has also held positions as a middle and high school English teacher, technology integrator, instructional coach, adjunct professor, graduate course designer for an edtech graduation program, and strategic educational consultant. He has written numerous articles and book chapters and has authored four books on the role of technology in education.
About the Moderator
Ellen Cleary is an education strategist and researcher with more than 25 years of experience across K–12, higher education, and workforce learning. Much of her work focuses on helping education organizations better understand the people they serve. She specializes in customer discovery and actionable research—talking with educators, leaders, and decision-makers to uncover what they need, how they make decisions, and what gets in their way. Ellen brings those insights back to organizations to inform product development, market strategy, messaging, and growth. She is a Senior Consultant with Advancing Global EDU.
Join the Community and Family Engagement community to network with educators, participate in online discussions, receive invitations to upcoming edWebinars, and view recordings of previous programs to earn CE certificates.
Learn more about earning a CE certificate and our accessibility features.
School Diary is an education technology platform helping schools and districts build stronger connections between students, families, educators, and school communities. Designed for K–12 education, School Diary brings critical student information and communication into one connected platform, helping school leaders move from fragmented data to timely action.
Schools can use School Diary to connect attendance, academic performance, behavior, health, and family engagement signals to better understand student needs and identify emerging patterns early. Its communication tools support two-way, multilingual engagement across 200+ languages, helping schools reach families in the language they prefer and build stronger partnerships around student success.
School Diary is built around a simple goal: help schools keep every student connected, supported, and engaged in learning. By combining actionable student insights with meaningful family engagement, School Diary helps educators address challenges earlier and create the conditions for stronger attendance, participation, and outcomes.
