Stephen Wakefield 
BALTIMORE, Md. — July 30, 2026 — Michigan’s Ypsilanti Community Schools (YCS) today announced the renewal of its partnership with Concentric Educational Solutions through the 2026-2027 school year. This agreement continues the implementation of Concentric’s human-centered service model districtwide for a third year, further engaging students and families to overcome the barriers to consistent attendance.
YCS offers many learning opportunities for students. Experts in PreK-12 education, along with universities, businesses, and parent partners, have assisted in the development of the district’s educational system. This system includes the Ypsilanti Puentes Multilingual School, Ypsi Connected Community School, and the Ypsilanti Magnet Schools. It also includes YCS’s International Baccalaureate and STEAM schools, other Project Based Learning and Leader in Me programs, its Early Learning Centers, and its elementary, middle, and high school campuses. The district is committed to helping every scholar succeed academically while growing socially and emotionally, and it has built a wide range of programs, from dual language immersion to STEAM and robotics, to meet the diverse needs and interests of its students. Consistent attendance is central to that mission, and decreasing chronic absenteeism is a key goal of YCS’s Five-Year Strategic Plan.
In the 2024-2025 school year, Concentric was selected to support efforts to improve student attendance districtwide. Concentric’s approach relies on trained members of the community to gather real-time insights from students and families, helping school systems respond to absences earlier, align resources, and address the factors driving disengagement. Services Concentric will continue providing to YCS include:
- Home visits by trained, community-based teams to families across every YCS school.
- Engagement with families through collaborative discussions to identify barriers to attendance.
- Custom ethnographic research from noted scholar and Howard University Professor Dr. Ivory Toldson. This research interprets data collected during family engagements to outline why chronically absent students have disengaged from learning.
- Collaboration with YCS administrators that turns research into intervention and support strategies for the students and families engaged during home visits.
“While Ypsilanti has made progress in improving our attendance numbers, we still have more work in front of us before all our scholars, from PreK to 12, are back in the classroom, reengaged in learning, and reconnected to opportunity. Strengthening our relationships with parents is central to this, as we know they are key partners in our students’ success,” said Dr. Carlos Lopez, Assistant Superintendent at Ypsilanti Community Schools. “Concentric Educational Solutions has played a key role in supporting our efforts to fight chronic absenteeism in classrooms across the district. We look forward to them continuing to aid us in the work to remove the barriers that are keeping students at every level from achieving their fullest potential in the 2026-2027 school year.”
“We’re proud that Ypsilanti Community Schools chose to renew this powerful partnership,” said Concentric Educational Solutions CEO Molly Hebert Loyd. “Superintendent Dr. Alena Zachery-Ross, Assistant Superintendent Dr. Carlos Lopez, and the rest of the YCS team have created an environment that is removing the barriers to better attendance for students in classrooms districtwide, and we are proud to be a part of their efforts. The Concentric team is looking forward to continuing to collaborate with the YCS team on efforts to drive down the number of chronically absent students in the school system in the upcoming school year.”
To learn more about Concentric Educational Solutions’ approach to student enrollment, re-engagement, and combating chronic absenteeism, download the company’s white paper on chronic absenteeism, visit the company’s website, follow the organization on X, or connect on LinkedIn.
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