WARREN — Warren City School District officials and community partners celebrated significant drops in chronic absenteeism Tuesday at a Climate Work Group meeting inside the district’s Student Recreation and Wellness Center.

The event highlighted the “Stay in the Game” initiative and the “Attend Today Succeed Tomorrow” campaign that wrapped up its first year.

District leaders credited close collaboration with local organizations for addressing barriers that keep students out of school.

Trisha DiCesare, a school counselor and community liaison at Lincoln PK-8, said the district achieved an 8% to 9% reduction in chronic absenteeism this school year. That far exceeds the typical 2% decrease seen in most districts partnering with the Stay in the Game network.

“We address barriers to attendance because there’s lots of different barriers that keep kids from coming to school,” DiCesare said in an interview before the meeting.

“They could be health care, family, housing and mental health issues. These community partners literally address all of those things.”

She pointed to on-site health services, including a nurse practitioner at school buildings and a satellite clinic at the wellness center. Students can get care during lunch without missing core classes.

Partnerships with mental health providers and organizations such as Akron Children’s also help families without pulling kids out of school.

DiCesare said the district saw strong gains at the Lincoln, McGuffey and Willard buildings.

She said the district is still working on high school attendance, which remains the biggest challenge.

Dante Capers, associate superintendent of student wellness and success for the Warren City School District, who leads aspects of the district’s climate and attendance efforts, outlined the campaign’s focus during the meeting. He said that missing as little as 10% of the school year can harm academic progress in reading, math and graduation rates regardless of the reason for absences.

“Attend Today Succeed Tomorrow” stresses both daily presence and long-term success, Capers said. The slogan aims to build hope, especially in a community that has faced economic challenges, addiction and loss.

The district joined the Cleveland Browns Foundation-backed Stay in the Game network this year. Some of the activities included attendance trophies that traveled between buildings, raffles, recognition events for students with 95% or better attendance and weekly data updates to staff. The district said those things did spark more engagement from students.

Capers shared state and local trends showing spikes in absenteeism after COVID-19 remote learning followed by a plateau.

This year’s targeted efforts produced encouraging early results in K-8 buildings with some seeing 5% reductions this year and up to 9% over two years.

The meeting opened with participants sharing personal reflections on what “fills their cup” to sustain their work supporting students. At one table filled with Warren City preschool representatives said family was one of the main points that came up during the exercise.

Looking ahead, DiCesare said the district will continue branding the attendance message across community sites and using visual tools like monthly calendars to help families see patterns and reflect without blame.

“We kind of for lack of a better way of putting it we’re branding it” she said “so that people can see hey like everyone cares about our students’ education and it’s important.”