National Attendance Awareness Month has begun, and local nonprofit E3 Alliance hosted a kickoff event Sept. 4 for its Missing School Matters campaign to reinforce the importance of students attending class.

Local educators, parents and community leaders gathered at an IBC Bank in East Austin to learn more about the campaign as well as data on absences in Central Texas schools. As part of the campaign, E3 recently launched a task force to inform parents about what they can do to help and to ask schools throughout Central Texas to participate in the nationwide Get Schooled attendance challenge Oct. 6–Dec. 13, according to Susan Dawson, E3 president and executive director.

Get Schooled encourages students to use social media, play games and take part in school-versus-school challenges to boost attendance. This year, Get Schooled worked with Facebook to develop a zombie-themed game to help students learn the steps needed to get to college, Dawson said, noting attendance affects academic achievement and graduation rates.

"If a student is absent 10 days, they're three times as likely to drop out [of school than they are] if they're just absent five days," she said.

Additionally, attendance dollars are part of the overall formula the state uses to determine school districts' funding. If districts throughout Central Texas could increase attendance by 2 percentage points, the region could get $34 million more in state funding for education, Dawson said.

Austin ISD Superintendent Meria Carstarphen said working with E3, along with continuing the district's own Every Day Counts attendance campaign, helped boost AISD's attendance, bringing in about $4 million in state funding in its first year and $5 million in its second year.

"This is the only way, other than going for a tax ratification election or getting a grant ... to be able to generate resources to be able to invest in schools," she said.

Stony Point High School in Round Rock ISD won the Get Schooled challenge last year, Principal Albert Hernandez said.

"It's indicative that a lot of hard work really does pay off I think we've really increased [students'] awareness of the importance of attendance," he said, adding this year Stony Point will focus on student participation in extracurricular activities to strengthen their connection to the school.

More information about E3's Missing School Matters is available at missingschoolmatters.org.