ALBANY COUNTY — Combating a nationwide problem, Albany County is offering to help the 12 school districts in the county reduce absenteeism by using an artificial-intelligence platform.

On Thursday, the county announced a pilot program with the Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk Central School District.

The county has an average unexcused absence rate of 26 percent across its 12 public school districts, meaning over 9,000 of the total 35,000 students county-wide are chronically absent.

The United States Department of Education defines chronic absenteeism as students missing 10 percent or more of school days.

The problem emerged during the pandemic when, during the 2021-22 school year, chronic absenteeism nationwide reached about 31 percent. It decreased to 28 percent in the 2022-23 school year, the most recent year for which nationwide records are available.

The Department of Education maps chronic absenteeism across the country, putting New York state at 35 percent. Oregon is mapped at the highest rate, at 44 percent, followed by New Mexico at 43 percent and Arizona at 42 percent.

The states with the lowest rate of chronic absenteeism are Idaho and New Jersey at 17 percent followed by Virginia and Connecticut at 19 percent.

Albany County’s pilot program uses Edia, a San Francisco-based company founded in 2020 by Joe Philleo. In high school, he built a platform to crowdsource AP textbook notes, his LinkedIn page says.

“In 2020,” Philleo writes, “I brought together top Silicon Valley technologists to start Edia, the leading AI Platform for K-12. Today, 200+ districts — including Fulton County, Denver, Cincinnati, and San Francisco — use Edia to boost math proficiency, cut chronic absenteeism, and run MTSS [Multi-Tiered System of Supports] on a unified, modern platform.”

According to the company’s website, when an absence comes up on a School Information System, “Edia’s AI texts the family in their preferred language and handles the entire conversation — back and forth. It captures the reason, collects documentation like doctor’s notes, logs everything to your SIS, and triages to staff when human attention is needed.”

The description continues, “Edia’s AI analyzes every conversation to tag root causes — illness, transportation, bullying, family crisis — and surfaces patterns you’d never catch manually: period-specific absences, sibling trends, and subtle tells in parent responses that signal deeper issues.”

Edia claims to reduce chronic absenteeism by 30 percent.

“Edia’s tools will help us focus our time and resources on actual solutions that help students who struggle to attend school regularly,” said RCS Superintendent Craig Chandler in a county release promoting the program. “We are thankful for Albany County recognizing this need and providing the financial support to make it happen. If we want different results, we need to try doing things differently.”

Albany County will help school districts cover a portion of the cost during the first year, the release said, explaining that RCS is registering for the program through BOCES and getting aid as a Course of Study/Services.

However, each district has its own aid ratio, and this aid will not cover the full cost of Edia, the county notes, which is why it has agreed to provide gap funding. The gap funding will come from the county’s School Bus Safety Program revenues.

​​In November 2022, Albany County launched a program with BusPatrol to discourage drivers from passing stopped school buses.

Schools that joined the BusPatrol program — which includes Berne-Knox-Westerlo, Bethlehem, Guilderland, North Colonie, South Colonie, and Voorheesville — had their buses equipped, for free, with cameras.

Drivers that pass school buses illegally are then ticketed and some of the fine money goes to Albany County.

Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy has said that money will be used for school safety and student support efforts.

Albany County will work directly with other districts to expand the program, the county release said, “and ensure districts have the support they need to participate.” The county encouraged school districts interested in learning more to contact Edia’s regional director, Victoria Macoul, at Victoria@edia.app.