Our Story
Learn about the story behind Attendance Genius.
Our Story
My name is Peta Bisset. I am a high school teacher and have been for 22 years. And I hate attendance.
Let me tell you the story of Attendance Genius. On November 7, 2022, I woke up and my left leg had stopped working. By the end of the day, the entire left side of my body had become paralyzed. You guessed it—I'd had a stroke. It was not caused by stress, but stress certainly played a part.
While I was recovering, I decided that I was going to do everything I could to remove stress from my life, so that I could do what I love, which is teaching. The number one thing that bothered me is not surprising. It's attendance. The entire process is archaic. It's time consuming—15 hours at the end of the school year. It's prone to mistakes.
Building the Solution
I have a background in computer programming. So a year after my stroke, I sat down and I wrote a program to take attendance for me. It worked beautifully. And my stress was reduced.
What surprised me was how much other people loved this program. Students asked for it for their teachers, teachers asked for it for themselves. Parents even wrote me about it. But it was when an admin called me into a meeting to ask about getting it for every teacher on campus that I realized there was some potential here. Apparently attendance was stressing other people out as well.
I spent a year listening to teachers, parents, students, admin—anyone who had anything to do with attendance. I then got together with my husband and my oldest daughter to build Attendance Genius. My husband has 25 years of programming and program management experience. My daughter has about eight years and just graduated with a computer science degree from UF.
