From left, Dallas Afterschool CEO Kevin Malonson, Communities Foundation of Texas Community Philanthropy Officer Candace Thompson and Dallas Mavericks Community Impact Manager Candace Sledge spoke at a For Oak Cliff event at the Dallas Zoo in recognition of World Chronic Absenteeism Awareness Day. [Photo: Dlores Media Group]
Dallas ISD’s Dr. Frederick Douglass Todd Sr. Middle School in South Oak Cliff earned an A+ for attendance gains during the 2025-26 academic year.
In the current school year, the nonprofit program that helped Todd Middle School hit that mark expanded to two more DISD schools. That brings the number of DISD schools participating in the initiative to four.
In 2025-26, the Dallas-based nonprofit For Oak Cliff piloted the program — which seeks to combat chronic absenteeism — at Todd Middle School and the Albert C. Black Jr. STEAM Academy. High absenteeism rates have plagued Todd and Black STEAM, which are feeder schools for South Oak Cliff High School, the nonprofit said.
Todd recorded the largest year-over-year increase, 8.6%, in average daily attendance in 2025-26 among Dallas ISD’s 228 campuses, For Oak Cliff said. In addition, Todd boosted its Texas Education Agency accountability rating from D to B. At Black STEAM, an elementary school, chronic absenteeism decreased by 9%.
The nonprofit celebrated those milestones with Dallas ISD educators during the inaugural World Chronic Absenteeism Awareness Day event on Monday at the Dallas Zoo.
The HIT initiative
For Oak Cliff’s Home Visits, Incentives and Training, or HIT, initiative combines educator training, targeted incentives and teachers’ home visits with students and their families.
“Chronic absenteeism is rarely about a student or family simply not valuing school. It is often a sign that there is a barrier we have to understand before we can help remove it,” Shareefah Mason, director of cradle-to-career education at For Oak Cliff, said in a statement.
HIT returned to Todd and Black STEAM for the 2026-27 academic year and expanded to two more schools in South Oak Cliff: John Lewis Social Justice Academy and Boude Storey Middle School.
Building momentum
As part of the HIT program, students received monthly, semester and annual awards for not missing school, the nonprofit said.
The program’s Go to School Dallas website shows Black STEAM notched a 500% increase in perfect attendance for the fall 2025 semester, with 120 students not missing a single day. Todd Middle School also saw a surge in perfect attendance, going from fewer than five students to 24.
“The first year of HIT showed us what can happen when educators have the tools and support to build deeper relationships with families, recognize progress and respond to what students actually need,” Mason said. “As we expand this work, we are building on what these educators learned and the trust they created with their school communities.”
Earlier this year, For Oak Cliff received a $1 million grant from the Communities Foundation of Texas to help lift middle-school attendance in South Oak Cliff.
Apart from HIT, Dallas ISD board members in December approved spending up to $5 million on programs and tools for bringing chronically absent students back to school.
Chronic absenteeism’s impact on school funding
Taylor Toynes, the CEO of For Oak Cliff, said in a video on the Go to School site that chronic absenteeism rates in Dallas ISD sit close to 50% at some campuses. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing at least 10% of the days in a school year, or about 18 days.
Public schools in Texas receive a big chunk of their funding based on average daily attendance. Xavier Henderson, For Oak Cliff’s chief strategy officer, said in the Go to School Dallas video that absenteeism costs Dallas ISD an estimated $17.5 million per year. In the Oak Cliff area alone, the annual figure is estimated at $5 million.
Losing that funding results in shortfalls in areas like curriculum, building improvements and classroom teaching, “so that means we’ve got to make sure we don’t leave any dollars on the table,” Henderson said.
“We’ve got to make sure we get all those resources for our kids,” he said.
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