The Victoria Independent School District (VISD) administration is working to increase school attendance across the district ahead of the 2025-2026 school year. The district has made improvements to yearly attendance over the last few years and is prioritizing its attendance goals.

“One of the big priorities for the board and the community has been attendance, and we worked all year long to ensure that we kept attendance rates close to the goal of 93 percent,” Sheila Collazo, VISD superintendent of schools, said. “This year, Dawn (Maroney) and her team spent a lot of time building up our attendance playbook.”

Over the last four years, attendance across the district has increased, Dawn Maroney, VISD executive director of student services, said at the VISD Board of Trustees July 17 meeting. Chronic absenteeism, students with unexcused or excused absences from over 10 percent of school days, has decreased across the district over the last three years too.

“We can put the best teachers in classrooms and have the best curriculum, but if we don’t have the students there, then we aren’t going to reach that next level of excellence,” Maroney said. “Excellence begins not only with me, but it begins with the common, easy, simple yet powerful step of showing up.”

VISD’s projected data for the 2024-2025 school year shows the district hit over 92 percent overall attendance and had 500 more students meet the compulsory attendance law. VISD had 96 percent of campuses and all grade levels show attendance growth.

The district provided tips for parents to make sure their students aren’t missing school unnecessarily. Parents should be mindful of when they are scheduling appointments for their students and should avoid scheduling them in the middle of the day, Maroney said.

Students should only stay home when they are truly sick and parents should communicate with their student’s campus when they will be absent.

“One of the biggest things that we hear from our campuses is students are either tardy for their first period, which means they’re missing out on the beginning of the morning instruction or they’re checking out early,”: Maroney said. “There is so much that happens from bell to bell that even if you check out your student an hour early, they’re still missing valuable [instruction] time.”

VISD will introduce an attendance playbook that includes crucial district attendance data and information on how to improve attendance and address any attendance concerns. The playbook will provide clear and consistent expectations, processes and procedures for holding students accountable for attendance and resources to ensure students are in class.

“This playbook is full of different resources that we have put together,” Maroney said. “It’s going to be growing, and we are looking forward to ending the school year by showing up.”

Michael Milliorn is a news reporter for the Victoria Advocate. He can be reached at michael.milliorn@vicad.com.