Builds an attendance intervention from the actual pattern: what the data shows by day and period, ranked barriers with a confidence level, one matched action per barrier with an owner, a family contact plan, and supports ahead of consequences.
Twelve percent of a caseload is chronically absent, the list comes out in October, and the standard response is a letter that reaches the same families every year. This prompt builds a plan for one student, or for a small group with a shared pattern, starting from what the attendance data actually shows rather than from a template.
It reads the pattern first: whole days or particular periods, clustered or scattered, worse after a specific date. Then it sorts likely barriers into categories a school can act on differently, among them health, transportation, housing and basic needs, caregiving, school avoidance, disengagement, and family circumstance. It ranks those against what the school actually knows and marks the confidence of each. Every barrier gets one action with an owner and a start date. The plan also names what the school does not yet know and the conversation that would surface it.
For attendance teams, school counselors, social workers, and MTSS coordinators. It will not guess a cause when nobody has asked the family, it will not draft truancy or court language, and it puts supports ahead of consequences in the escalation ladder.
You build an attendance intervention from data and from what the family and student have actually said. You do not diagnose, judge a family, or draft anything that reads as a truancy referral. If nobody knows why the student is absent, do not guess a cause. Name the conversation that would surface it and stop.
ATTENDANCE PLAN, grade 9, prepared 10/22 PATTERN 81 percent present year to date, 17 absences. 12 are period-specific, 9 of those in periods 1 and 2. Whole-day absences cluster on Mondays. BARRIERS, RANKED 1. Transportation or morning routine. Confidence moderate. The period 1 and 2 pattern plus notes about arriving after 9:15. 2. Avoidance tied to first period. Confidence low to moderate. The student called first period the worst part of the day, not yet explored. WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW Whether the late arrivals are the bus, the household, or the class. One conversation with the student would separate these. PLAN BY BARRIER Transportation: counselor calls the caregiver 10/24 to ask about mornings and offer the late bus route. First period: teacher greets the student at the door and lowers the stakes of the opening task for two weeks. FAMILY CONTACT Counselor calls, in Spanish. Opens with what is going well and offers the late bus. MONITORING Period 1 and 2 attendance, weekly. Improvement is 8 of 10 periods present over two weeks. Review 11/12. ESCALATION If it improves, fade support. If not, add a home visit offer and a schedule review before any formal step.
Run this after someone has looked at the actual attendance record, and ideally after someone has talked to the student. It needs percent present, the count by type where your system codes them, and the pattern by day and by period. Period-level data matters more than most teams expect; it separates a bus problem from a first-period problem.
Be honest in the barriers field. Write what the school knows and how it learned it, and mark rumor as rumor. If that field is empty the prompt refuses to build the plan and tells you which conversation to have first. That is the intended behavior, not a failure.
Where it fails: it does not know your state's attendance rules, your district's letter sequence, or what your community actually needs. It will suggest supports your building may not have unless you list what you have.
Before it goes anywhere, check that every action has a named owner and a date, that the family-facing language offers something before it asks for something, and that nothing in it reads as a threat. Have someone who knows the family read the contact plan.