Katy ISD: Attendance incentive credited with adding roughly 800 daily students and generating about $5M in state funding

Dr. Emily Craig, assistant superintendent for school leadership and support, and Jamie Hines, assistant superintendent of finance, told the board the district’s “Attend Today, Achieve Tomorrow” incentives helped recover enrollment after the pandemic and improve outcomes. "Our attendance incentive over the past 3 years roughly equates to about 800 more students in class every single day," Craig said, explaining the program’s academic and fiscal rationale.

Jamie Hines described the funding effects and how incentive money is distributed to campuses: "that over 800 kids being in class every day equals is over $5,000,000 just in the basic allotment," he said, and added that campuses receive direct payouts (example amounts cited: $10,000 for a high school, $7,000 for a junior high, $5,000 for an elementary) with 50% of incentive dollars directed to instruction budgets. Hines told trustees that in the most recent year 53 of the district’s 79 campuses received an incentive and that the district implemented a maintenance incentive to reward campuses that sustain high attendance.

Trustees pressed for operational detail: whether the attendance rate refers to enrolled students (the presenters confirmed it does), how gains compare with state averages (district rates have improved and remain strong for a large district), and whether the district collects systematic reasons for absences. Craig and Hines said schools track individual absence causes via counselors and dropout-prevention staff and that the district is exploring ways to roll up that data for strategic interventions.

The board heard that the program is self-funding by design: incentives are only paid when the district’s average daily attendance increases enough to yield additional state funding. District leaders said the initiative has resulted in sustained year-over-year improvement but that the district will continue targeting low-attendance periods and student subpopulations that still need support.