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State Advisory Council for Parent Involvement in Education �Full Council Meeting

February 10, 2026

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Business

November Minutes Approval

2026 Vacancies

(Darcy will check in with SACPIE members)

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Rapid Fire Hospitable Hello

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In 20 seconds or less

Name
Role on SACPIE
In 5 words or less, something that is currently bringing you joy

Parent Members	Organization/Agency Members
Congressional District you represent (and geographic area) Why you joined SACPIE 2 additional pieces of info (job, ages of children, summer activities….etc)	Agency and role Why you joined SACPIE 2 additional pieces of info (pets, ages of children, podcast you like….etc)

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State Board of Education Updates

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Colorado Statewide Education Accountability Dashboard Study Feedback

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BREAK

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Colorado Department of Education FSCP Report

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Office of FSCP Updates

STATE-LEVEL LEADERSHIP

DIRECT FACILITATION OF DISTRICTS

FSCP:

Back to Basics

FSCP Think Tank for Collaborative districts a success!
Western Slope Coffee Chat in Feb
Focusing more supports on principals
Gearing Up for FSCP Retreat

Friends of FSCP Podcast
Other Office Using FSCP Framework (librarians, Read Act)

SACPIE

2025 Annual Report Now Online
Ad hoc Opportunities (next slide)

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Follow-Up Education Governance Document

Melissa and I reviewed your feedback from November and headed in two directions.

Graphic showing governance
Want to develop a FAQ for parents

Simplified the information in this graphic.

NOTE: This is a starting point.
Question for SACPIE: Are we headed in the right direction for a simplified version of what you saw in November?

FAQ Question for SACPIE: What buckets of information/topics are most critical to address in a parent-facing FAQ about school governance?
Darcy will follow-up in an email to see who would be willing to serve on an ad hoc committee.
The hope is the graphic and FAQ will be done by June.

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On the Horizon for SACPIE

Accountability Committee Toolkit

Darcy and Dan are putting together a toolkit for SAC/DAC members. We are starting with one-pagers about each legislated responsibility including the statute, promising practices, and school/district spotlight. (Another Ad Hoc Committee!)

Promising Partnership Practices

As always, we need your help collecting Promising Partnership Practices. Due Date is June 5th but don’t delay!

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Increasing Student Engagement

Decreasing Chronic Absenteeism

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CDE Strategic Plan

SACPIE written into CDE Strategic Plan!

Increasing Student Engagement
Integrate and elevate family and community partnerships to increase student engagement.

Conduct listening/feedback sessions with family-facing groups that the Family and School Community Partnerships (FSCP) Community of Practice members oversee/support..

Revise Family and School Community Partnerships (FSCP) Framework materials to emphasize the connection between FSCP and student engagement.

Develop and publish high-impact district and family-facing materials and trainings that are culturally responsive through an iterative development process with SACPIE.

Leverage CDE’s out-of-school time (OST) programs to improve school day attendance and increase student and family engagement.

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Closing the Feedback Loop

Late August–Conducted focus group with SACPIE.
Early September–Johann, Martha, and Darcy debrief synthesis of responses.
Late September–shared synthesis with Increasing Student Engagement leadership team and discussed next steps.
Mid October–Presented progress to the State Board of Education.
Late October–cleaned up synthesis of responses and discussed again at ISE leadership team meeting.
Early November–Johann, Martha, and Darcy met again.
November - Feedback on Communications Toolkit
December/January - Small group feedback with Communications
TODAY !
Coming up–Hopefully conduct focus groups with Migrant PAC and C-SEAC.

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Our strategies to increase student engagement are based on a comprehensive, multi-faceted approach.

Improving Attendance and Engagement

Capacity on effective strategies & structures

Engaging and Innovative instruction

Student and staff well-being

Physical, mental, and behavioral health

Family and Community Partnerships

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Looking back and looking forward: capacity building and wellness

Capacity on effective strategies & structures

Physical, mental, and behavioral health

Shared guidance, data tools, attendance awareness campaign and learning opportunities

Healthy School Meals for All Average Daily Meals served:

Breakfast ~194,000
Lunch ~450,000

Targeted outreach and expanded professional learning opportunities

Trainings and resources to support specialized service provider retention

2024-2025

2025-2026

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Danielle

Last year, to increase school and district capacity to implement effective attendance strategies and structures, we launched activities to raise awareness, including our Attendance Awareness campaign, Every School Day Matters, new guidance documents on rules and best practices, and learning opportunities that brought together school and district leaders to share and learn about effective practices. The peer learning cohort model was particularly valuable in this time period when almost every district in Colorado was experiencing absences at levels they had not seen previously.

In 2025-26, we are looking to expand the opportunities we started and target resources for grants and training towards highest needs. We are expanding professional learning opportunities so there are options from basic to advanced and attendance and engagement are incorporated into other efforts. In addition, as we have seen stubborn trends in attendance, we are looking for additional ways to target current grant dollars and ensure that there is specific recruitment for key events and support that CDE offers.

We are striving to coordinate and integrate physical, mental, and behavioral supports into our school communities, to address some of the barriers and aversions to school. In 2024-25, we worked on a number of efforts related to comprehensive health, including the role of school nurses, school nutrition, and how other health professionals are essential in meeting student needs and helping them stay connected to learning. One such area of coordination is around the healthy school meals program which has expanded access for students and served more than xx meals last school year These meals ensure that hunger is not a barrier to learning and students can continue to engage. We have also heard anecdotally, that healthy school meals for all has been a draw for students to come to school every day.

For our 2025-26 school year, we want to highlight a focus on staff retention for our specialized service providers. We are updating and expanding the resources that enable school health professionals, school nurses, mental health providers, and others with the key information and guidance to complete their role effectively.

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Looking back and looking forward: strengthening instruction and well-being

Engaging and Innovative Instruction

Student and staff well-being

Bringing data together across CDE to elevate effective practices

300+ trainings supporting student and staff well-being

Listening sessions, elevating promising practices, creating a common vision for Best First Instruction.

Developing and releasing asynchronous, on-demand online learning modules

2024-2025

2025-2026

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Danielle

Another aspect that can impact student engagement is the classroom learning experience. At the CASE conference this summer, Fountain Fort Carson’s Youth Advisory Council presented on their work. When asked about what areas students would like more voice in, multiple advisory council members spoke about instruction and learning models.

While we have spent less time on this component so far, we are doing early planning with colleagues from across CDE that you will hear more about in the Accelerating Student Outcomes presentation. Initially, we have analyzed data together to highlight effective practices in this area and looking forward to the work on a common vision for best first instruction that we can support and use with districts.

For this year, we plan to collaborate across CDE to host a series of community listening sessions, including students, to better understand what is driving student attendance and engagement, how families are interacting with schools around engagement, and how innovation around learning supports student engagement, especially at the high school level. We’ll appreciate your help getting the word out about the listening session.

In terms of student and staff well-being, last year over 10 offices at CDE provided training to more than 300 individuals on issues impacting student and staff well being such as behavior, discipline, mental and physical health, school safety, school climate, and multi-level or multi-tiered systems of support. These trainings focus on strategies to build strong student relationships and connections at school, build safe and engaging learning environments, and create processes that remove barriers to continuous engagement in learning. In addition, this included finalizing a number of components of the Landscape of Well-Being and Belonging, a project to provide training, guidance, resources, and information about best practices to improve student and staff well-being.

This year, we will continue our work on the Landscape of Well-Being and Belonging to finalize tools such as self-assessments and implementation guides and provide training for school and district leaders on implementation. In addition, we just concluded our most recent Landscape conference in September and will include new asynchronous on-demand online learning modules that can help broaden access to new information.

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Looking back and looking forward: engaging parents and families

Family and Community Partnerships

Worked with 700+ family-family professionals in districts and community organizations

Co-create multi-faceted tools for families and staff, (including SACPIE) to get feedback on tools for attendance

2024-2025

2025-2026

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Danielle

Lastly, we are working to integrate and elevate family and community partnerships. Last year we worked with over 400 district and community leaders providing family engagement and family education programs through out-of-school time programs. This includes before and after school, summer school, school breaks and 5th day enrichment programming for schools with 4 day school weeks. The type of support provided includes statewide grantee webinars, meetings, onsite visits, statewide trainings and convenings, as well as individualized technical assistance from CDE’s Office of Student Support. Additionally, 3,714 family members participated in at least one activity for state and federally funded out of school time programs. We also partnered with over 300 individuals in 52 districts to help staff implement the P-12 family, school, and community partnerships framework. This framework is part of a step-by-step guide for districts and schools to follow in order to partner with families for positive student outcomes, including improved attendance.

For the coming year, we are planning to focus on partnering with family-facing advisory groups, community organizations, and district staff to co-create and share tools about how family and community partnerships can help increase student engagement and improve attendance. For example, our staff attended the September State Advisory Council for Parent Involvement in Education (SACPIE) meeting (and appreciated having representatives from the Board there) to gather feedback and discuss tools that would be effective. These tools will likely include self-paced courses, toolkits, learning cohorts, and promising partnership practices. We will expand on resources that already exist to more intentionally include a family/community partnership and attendance component.

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What we have learned in Colorado?

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Stakeholder Connections

State Advisory Council for Parents In Education (SACPIE) - Quarterly meetings
Colorado Special Education Advisory Committee (CSEAC)
District Attendance liaisons
Denver Public Schools in-depth review
Presentations from other state education agencies on trends

Goals:

Better understand what is occurring with attendance
How CDE can best respond
How school and district staff can best respond

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Ensuring support for all groups

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Mid-year 2024-25 review

Mid-year interviews with 10 districts representing more than 260,000 students

Chronic absenteeism is generally improving or stabilizing, but uneven

Several districts report modest declines in CA or positive semester-over-semester movement, especially in elementary grades.
High school—particularly 9th grade- was flagged, with some districts seeing flat or worsening CA.

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Mid-Year 2024-25

Identified successes

Consistency in reporting, data collection, and messages
Removing cell phones
Earlier responses from school teams (not just waiting until 10+ days)

Identified challenges

Balancing needs for mental health support with attendance
High school (trends, remote learning, etc.)
Unique community impacts (immigration fears, distance to doctors appts)

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West Virginia sample

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What are we learning from parents and students?

Messaging matters for parents and students

Communications related to absences, make-up work
Thinking about true partnership (ie why did this happen?)

Missing school comes from a variety of factors

School should be interesting, engaging, and relevant (and is social!)

72% of students say "engaging classes" have the greatest impact on their decision to come to school.

DPS survey

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What we are learning from staff members?

Data is not as accessible as it should or could be.

Sometimes the message is the same

Many people feel that they don’t have time to do this work.

Building consistency across buildings is time consuming and challenging

63% of staff "do not feel like I have time to follow up with students and families when students are absent."

DPS Survey

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Final thoughts

There are consistent, effective practices for data collection and use, meeting and coordinating services, and messaging

The solutions to this have some built in conflict and require comprehensive solutions

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SAC/DAC Deck

We have created a deck and session outline for School Accountability Committees and District Accountability Committees who are interested in tackling questions of attendance and chronic absenteeism.��We are actively seeking partners who are willing to pilot this resource and provide feedback.

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Purpose of Slides

School Accountability Committees can select to discuss attendance per C.R.S. 22-11-402 (h)(III)

The following slides are intended to support a School Accountability Committee (SAC) with a discussion about attendance and the role of family and community partnerships.

There are talking points for each of the overview slides that can be read to the group
There are placeholders where local school data or information can be included
There are suggested activities for each section.

Summary of slides:

Slides 2-6 provide an overview of why attendance is important, the national trend data and key terms.
Slides 7-11 provide an overview of CO attendance trends and an activity to examine school data.
Slides 12-17 provide an overview of why absences occur and how schools can organize responses with families. There are two suggested activities.
Slide 18-19 are resource slides

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SACPIE Member�Resource Sharing

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Mark Your Calendars!

Full Council Meetings

Reminder: Members must attend at least three meetings per year.

February 10, 2026

May 5, 2026

August 25, 2026

November 17, 2026

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Thank you!�