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What to ask the school

Most meetings about attendance spend their first half establishing something everyone in the room already knew.

Send the plan before the meeting. A ladder with numbers on it changes what the meeting is for: the problem is already described, so the time goes on who does what.

Before the meeting

• Email the ladder and the pattern summary to whoever is running the meeting, two or three days ahead.
• Say which two steps you want to work on this month. Not the whole list.
• Ask who else should be in the room. The nurse and the classroom teacher are often the ones who will actually run the plan.

In the meeting

• What exactly happens when my child asks to leave class, and who decides?
• Where does my child go, and what returns them to class rather than to me?
• Who is the one named adult my child checks in with, and who covers when that person is out?
• What are we trying by name in the next two weeks, and how will we know it worked?
• What does the attendance record say right now, and what triggers the next escalation?
• If this does not move by a date we set today, what happens then?

After the meeting

Send a short email listing what was agreed, who is doing it, and the review date. Ask them to correct anything you got wrong. This takes five minutes and it is the difference between a plan and a conversation.