Florida district becomes first in state to implement Attendance Intervention, aiming to reduce chronic absenteeism by 12% and reach 95% daily attendance

PowerSchool, a leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education, today announced that Marion County Public Schools (MCPS), in Ocala, Florida, has selected PowerSchool Attendance Intervention to help reduce chronic absenteeism, increase overall student attendance, and improve communication with families across its more than 60 schools.

Funded through a federal Stronger Connections grant, MCPS is the first district in Florida to implement the solution, which will launch in time for the 2025-2026 school year. The district aims to reduce its chronic absenteeism rate by 12% (32% to 20%) and to ultimately reach 95% average daily attendance across all student populations. Achieving this goal would place MCPS as a leader in tackling chronic absenteeism amongst districts in Florida, where the average daily attendance was 91.4% as of the latest data available, from the 2023-24 school year. Chronic absenteeism (students missing 10% or more of the school year) also increased significantly in Florida schools since the pandemic, rising more than 50% from the 2018-19 school year to the 2023-24 school year.

“We’ve made incremental progress year over year, but we need a bigger shift,” said Yvette del Nodal, Director, Mental Health & Wellness, Marion County Public Schools. “PowerSchool Attendance Intervention stood out because it’s not just about boosting attendance—it’s about reaching families, in their home language, and building relationships that support students in the long term.”

Attendance Intervention is a research-backed solution that helps schools and districts detect early signs of absenteeism and implement targeted interventions. The solution combines early warning analytics, customizable workflows, and automated communication tools to support students’ most at risk.

A Johns Hopkins University School of Education study found that districts using Attendance Intervention saw measurable improvements in attendance, including a reduction in chronic absenteeism and increased engagement between families and school staff. MCPS includes 33 elementary schools, nine middle schools, seven high schools, and a range of charter, virtual, and technical learning facilities.

In addition to addressing communication, MCPS will use Attendance Intervention to deliver positive reinforcement strategies, such as classroom celebrations and attendance-based incentives. The district also launched a Community Attendance Council to address out-of-school barriers like transportation, health, and housing instability.

Marion County Public Schools serves more than 45,000 students across Central Florida, many of whom speak languages other than English like Spanish, Gujarati, Vietnamese, Haitian-Creole, Mandarin, Portuguese, and Zhongwen (Hanyu). Attendance Intervention’s automatic translation feature allows staff to send and receive messages in families’ home languages directly to their mobile phones without requiring app downloads or login credentials.

About PowerSchool

PowerSchool is a leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America. Its mission is to empower educators, administrators, and families to ensure personalized education for every student journey. PowerSchool offers end-to-end product clouds that connect the central office to the classroom to the home with award-winning products including Schoology Learning and Naviance CCLR, so school districts can securely manage student data, enrollment, attendance, grades, instruction, assessments, human resources, talent, professional development, special education, data analytics and insights, communications, and college and career readiness. PowerSchool supports over 60 million students in more than 90 countries and over 18,000 customers, including more than 90 of the top 100 districts by student enrollment in the United States.

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