When the Kansas City, Kan., district decided to take a fresh approach to student attendance, Naomi Tolentino knew she would need to get all hands on deck.
As coordinator of student supports, Tolentino leads the 鈥淎ttend to Achieve鈥� program, which aims to shift strategies from punishing truancy to preventing chronic absenteeism.
That meant she needed to create a common language to help employees throughout the system鈥攆rom teachers to front office staff鈥攗nderstand why even excused absences can harm a student鈥檚 academic progress.
She built out a data dashboard to help schools identify attendance patterns at school and individual student levels. And she created systemwide interventions that help school staff members strengthen their relationships with students and offer them more interventions when they demonstrate a higher level of need.
Tolentino, a 2025 EdWeek Leaders To Learn From honoree, spoke with Education Week about the systemic strategies鈥攊ncluding shifting the focus of chronic absenteeism, implementing data-driven programs, and meeting the unique needs of students, families, and schools. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What do people misunderstand about chronic absenteeism?
There鈥檚 still a misconception that we鈥檙e talking [about] crime when we鈥檙e talking about chronic absenteeism. People still think we鈥檙e talking about truancy. But we鈥檙e really talking about a positive, proactive approach.
For parents, there鈥檚 still this misconception that we鈥檙e talking about unexcused absences, when in reality we are talking about people who are missing school, regardless of the reason. We want to know the 鈥渨hy.鈥� We see that as a tool to help support you.
How did your district identify this as a priority?
We had attendance issues for a long time, but we were just looking at truancy.
We started in our strategic planning process, and we started looking at the research on absenteeism. We worked with organizations like Attendance Works to see best practices and say, 鈥淲hat does that look like in our district?鈥�
It鈥檚 not like we weren鈥檛 doing anything. A lot of schools were doing very good work, but we needed to dig deeper at the district level to say, 鈥淗ow do we make this consistent?鈥� We were not supporting our schools. We didn鈥檛 have guidance or resources.
How did you get started?
We decided to work with the experts and we created something called the Attendance Learning Network.
We created a data dashboard and started asking questions. What does the data say? What does it mean? Before, we only had data on overall attendance, not chronic absenteeism, so that was a big first step.
We needed a mindset shift, starting with [district] leadership. Then we had to determine what we wanted principals to know. We wanted to bring this to our buildings with some strong professional learning. We created an attendance guide for schools that had everything in one place.
We started with 20 schools and asked their principals to identify who in the building should be a part of this work. [Attendance teams in every school include administrators, attendance directors, and school social workers.]
How did your district incorporate chronic absenteeism into your multi-tiered system of supports?
At that time, we were already integrating social-emotional learning into our MTSS, and I was a part of those conversations.
The research said that attendance is about the student as a whole, and we realized some of those strategies could help students feel safe and connected to school. We started looking at students鈥� conditions for learning, not just 鈥渓et鈥檚 do attendance celebrations and make sure students are here.鈥�
Every building鈥檚 data was telling us different things, so we couldn鈥檛 just do one strategy districtwide. In one school, students who walked were having trouble, in another it was students experiencing homelessness. So that鈥檚 when we decided we would have some master interventions for the district and then, [attendance teams] had to decide what would work best for their building.
What are some examples of interventions?
On tier one, we鈥檙e looking at mostly interventions around climate and culture. As a district, it is the expectation that everyone鈥檚 doing morning greetings of students and one other strategy. For example, some schools, when we鈥檙e looking at the data, we鈥檙e noticing that there鈥檚 a disconnection with parents, so they increase parent communication, create welcome packages for families [who are new to the district.]
On tier two, we are focused on positive relationships. I give them one strategy: Everyone has to do relationship mapping [where teams determine if students with poor attendance have a trusted relationship with an adult in school], or two by 10 [where an adult commits two minutes a day for a personal conversation with a student, 10 days in a row].
And schools can choose another tier two strategy based on their data, like calling parents to have positive conversations about their students and see if they need resources. You might say, 鈥淚 noticed that Naomi missed five days this semester so far. Thank you for the days that she鈥檚 here.鈥� And they may say, 鈥淎ctually, those five days were because we were experiencing homelessness and we were sleeping in the car.鈥� Then we have resources we can offer them.
One of our elementary schools has matched every student with a 鈥渃hampion,鈥� who writes an encouraging note home every two weeks or does something to make sure the student feels seen. One of our counselors told me that her nephew goes to that school and when she went to visit him at home, he had taped one of those notes to the front door. I literally cried in that meeting.
At tier three, we have a meeting with parents to say, 鈥淲e need to talk about attendance. We want to help you avoid truancy.鈥�
How did your work teaching newcomer English learners prepare you for this role?
I believe in the value of relationships. It鈥檚 part of who I am and how I grew up.
When I was working with the newcomer students, it was just impossible for me not to build relationships with my students and their families and know their stories. I wanted to create a space in my classroom where students felt connected.
I hear a lot about the challenges that our immigrant families face but when I was in the classroom, I saw it, you know? I had conversations with parents who had no idea how the system works. They had no idea that attendance is a requirement here. They didn鈥檛 know that you can get into legal trouble, or why coming to school is so important.
It was eye-opening.
Do you have any advice for district leaders who want to dig into attendance work?
Every district is different, but something that has been powerful for us is collaborating with other districts and organizations doing the same work. When I created the parents鈥� guide on our website, I looked at materials from five different districts to see what would be effective.
Also, look [at] your schools. We had schools that were doing really amazing work that we didn鈥檛 even know about. We want to give our schools guidance and resources, but we also want to let them decide [interventions] for themselves, because every school is serving different families and communities.
