CDE Field Trips -- 8/27/24: Commissioner's Chat with Durango Superintendent Karen Cheser about Attendance

Students at Durango School District play basketball on the playground. The district focused in on attendance in 2023-24 school year.

Durango School District made attendance a big focus in 2023-24, reducing its chronic absenteeism by about 7 percentage points over the past two years. That is roughly 500 more students who were in school last year than were in school consistently during the 2021-22 school year. The district also has a 92.5% average daily attendance rate.

In her Commissioner Chat, Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova spoke with Durango Superintendent Karen Cheser about how the district improved its attendance. Strategies included messaging parents and contacting families every time a student was absent to explain the importance of being in school every day, Cheser said.

School-based attendance review teams at the district work with data and look at what kind of relationships the student had at school. They conduct empathy interviews to determine the root causes of why students are absent and create plans that are individualized for students and schools. 

The district also developed a broad mission called Portrait of a Graduate that is a common vision for the skills that students are building as they work to identify pathways for their future.  This connection provides a unified vision that attendance work reinforces. The idea is giving students hope for the future will compel them to be in school regularly.