How Jefferson County Cut Chronic Absenteeism by 4%

Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS), one of Kentucky’s largest and most diverse districts, serves nearly 96,000 students. Over 60% of students identify as students of color, and almost 70% qualify for free or reduced lunch.

Like many districts nationwide, JCPS has faced mounting challenges around chronic absenteeism—a growing crisis that directly impacts student achievement, funding, and equity.

Absenteeism often reflects broader issues—language barriers, inconsistent transportation, mental health, and housing insecurity—all of which JCPS knew they had to address more holistically. 

Chronic absenteeism in Jefferson County 

For JCPS, chronic absenteeism wasn’t a new problem, but it had intensified in recent years, particularly among students facing systemic barriers to attendance, including multilingual families. Student services teams were stretched thin, struggling to provide individualized support without a centralized system to track interventions or flag early signs of disengagement. 

Communication breakdowns made matters worse. The district relied on a patchwork of messaging tools, which led to inconsistent outreach and confusion for families. Many parents were unsure what communication to trust or how often they’d receive it. Without a scalable way to track attendance patterns across schools and quickly intervene, progress was hard to measure and even harder to sustain. 

The road to better data, smarter outreach, and unified systems 

District leaders knew they needed more than good intentions. They needed clear, actionable insights into attendance patterns, early warning indicators to support students before they fell behind, and a more thoughtful approach to communication—especially for families whose first language wasn’t English. 

They found that solution in PowerSchool Attendance Intervention. The built-in dashboards offer instant visibility into school, grade level, and MTSS tier attendance trends. Additionally, the district can scale its family engagement efforts through multilingual, two-way messaging. 

Attendance Intervention also helped schools document legitimate absences more accurately, especially when language barriers had previously led to missed communication. By improving how they collected and responded to absence data, JCPS could begin distinguishing between unexcused and unavoidable absences with more nuance. 

Director of Pupil Personnel Brent Lynch emphasizes how crucial this shift has been, particularly for non-English-speaking households. “Increased communication with multilingual families,” he shares, “has been a huge positive.” 

Implementing a system-wide, tiered approach with PowerSchool 

JCPS moved from a reactive approach to a daily, system-wide strategy with PowerSchool. Schools began using Attendance Intervention to send personalized messages to families when a student was absent. Clerks and support teams could easily filter by MTSS tier and send messages to targeted groups. 

The district also leveraged digital postcards to reinforce positive habits. Families began receiving regular mail celebrating strong attendance—a small gesture with a significant emotional impact. As more staff and teachers began using the platform, what started as a communication tool became an engagement engine. 

Instead of only contacting families when something was wrong, JCPS used AIS to reinforce what was going well—helping build trust, pride, and connection at scale. 

But success didn’t happen overnight. Families were initially unsure what the new messages were or if they could trust them. To close the gap, JCPS’s student services and communications teams collaborated on a districtwide campaign to explain what to expect from Attendance Intervention and why it mattered. This intentional alignment turned unfamiliar notifications into trusted communication that felt personal, not punitive. 

4% drop in chronic absenteeism districtwide 

The results: fewer chronically absent students and stronger family trust 

Today, JCPS has seen chronic absenteeism drop by approximately four percentage points in just one year. Some schools have seen even more dramatic gains, with double-digit improvements. Average daily attendance now hovers at 91%, a meaningful increase in a district of this size and complexity.  Dr. Matt Anderson, Assistant Superintendent for Climate and Culture, says, “No school is going the other direction. Everybody’s gone down at varying levels, but nobody’s headed the wrong direction.” 

Attendance Intervention has become more than just a platform—it’s a daily tool that enables real-time insights, personalized interventions, and stronger family partnerships.

Diving deeper into the root causes of absenteeism at JCPS 

Looking ahead, JCPS isn’t slowing down. The district plans to continue refining how it tracks and categorizes absences, using Attendance Intervention data to potentially excuse more legitimate absences that previously went unverified. 

In tandem with this work, JCPS is also engaging students through an attendance team that works to identify and improve resources and supports that remove barriers. This framework includes additional mental health and wellness services, targeted re-engagement staff, and increased multilingual supports. 

They’re also working with Evolve502, a local community organization, to explore the root causes of absenteeism through focus groups and family outreach. By identifying the why behind the absences—not just the numbers—JCPS hopes to deepen its support and ensure every student has the opportunity to succeed.