The San Mateo County Office of Education (SMCOE), in collaboration with the Full Circle Fund, is on its way to creating the iZone, an initiative intended to foster and scale innovation in teaching, learning, assessment and educational leadership.

Headed on the County Office side by Brian Simmons, Director of Accountability, Innovation and Results at SMCOE, the idea is to help educators innovate in the classroom to make learning relevant for today's Digital Information Age by experimenting with new technologies and instructional models and then using them to personalize education and close the achievement gap. The iZone also hopes to assist local districts in taking advantage of economies of scale to improve the value and lower the costs of technology for schools

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Initially the iZone is focusing on technology infrastructure in San Mateo County schools. Core groups from around the county, known as Design Teams, in partnership with the Education SuperHighway, a San Francisco-based nonprofit whose mission is to ensure every K-12 classroom in America has reliable, high-capacity Internet access to take advantage of the promise of digital learning, will develop and manage a plan to upgrade county regional infrastructure to connect all classrooms, and ideally homes, to learning-ready Internet. "We didn't realize how challenged we are in this area. Only half of the classrooms in the county have sufficient Internet capacityfor digital learning," notes Simmons. "And you can't do whiz-bang technology and personalized learning if you don't have the bandwidth. Districts are now paying a wide array of costs. It's possible that we could achieve economies of scale by working together."

Learn more about how the iZone was created and its other initiatives here.

About 50 school district personnel, childcare and preschool staff kicked off Attendance Awareness Month and learned about the importance of consistent school attendance from preschool on up at the Attendance Matters workshop held at the San Mateo County Office of Education (SMCOE) on September 10, 2013.

County Superintendent Anne Campbell welcomed the crowd and noted

Hedy Chang of Attendance Works led a workshop at SMCOE on strategies for improving school attendance.

 that reducing chronic absence in the county by 50 percent is one focus of the Big Lift, a project of the Peninsula Partnership Leadership Council, whose overall goal is moving the third grade reading proficiency rate from 58 percent to 80 percent by 2020. Reducing chronic absence is a key strategy toward meeting this goal.

She then introduced the morning's keynote speaker Hedy Chang, Director of Attendance Works, a national nonprofit based in Oakland, Calif. that promotes better policy and practice around school attendance.

Chang noted that good attendance habits begin in preschool. Research shows that students who are chronically absent in preschool are more likely to miss school once they enter elementary school. Chronic absence--defined as missing 10 percent or more of school for any reason--is a hidden national crisis, says Chang, with one out of 10 students nationwide falling into this category. These students are at greater risk for falling behind academically. The long term impact of chronic absence is most troubling for poor children, who often have difficulty getting to school because of transportation and/or health issues. And in classes where there are a large percentage of chronically absent students, it becomes difficult for the teacher to keep the entire class moving forward.

Chang also spoke about barriers to school attendance, intervention strategies, and how to communicate respectfully with families whose students do not attend school regularly. She also noted that attendance data can provide warning signs, and help schools communicate with families before their student's success is in jeopardy.

On its website, Attendance Works provides tracking tools and intervention strategies that can help schools monitor, understand and address chronic absence. Sandy Mikulik, Director of Curriculum and Instruction and Student Services in the Jefferson Elementary School District, spoke about her district's experience using Attendance Works tracking tools, sharing the data with her district's administrative council. The tools allowed her to focus on this issue with staff and come up with intervention strategies to work with families of chronically absent students.

Campbell noted that Brian Simmons, Director of Accountability, Innovation and Results at SMCOE, is available to assist districts with attendance data tracking. Participants at the workshop had time to self-assess their awareness of attendance issues in their schools and districts, and to discuss next steps. Jessica Mihaly of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation spoke about addressing these next steps and Erica Wood, Vice President of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation offered closing remarks.