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SchoolStatus Partners with Over Half of California Districts to Improve Attendance

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EdTech leader SchoolStatus now supports over 3.6 million students across 514 California school districts, driving statewide attendance improvements with data-backed tools and family engagement solutions.

SACRAMENTO, Calif., May 7, 2025 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — As California schools face an urgent attendance crisis, SchoolStatus is standing alongside district leaders as a trusted and proven partner. With over two decades of expertise in developing impactful education technology and a deep understanding of California’s legal and regulatory landscape, SchoolStatus supports over 50% of school districts—more than 3.6 million students—in California alone.

“SchoolStatus’ support has been instrumental in helping us significantly improve our attendance rates and decrease chronic absenteeism.” Dr. Ramiro Rubalcaba, Superintendent of Los Nietos SD.

“What sets SchoolStatus apart isn’t just our technology—it’s our comprehensive partnership approach. We’re providing California districts with a complete ecosystem: actionable data analytics, automated positive messaging that celebrates progress, and professional development that builds capacity within attendance teams,” said Dr. Kara Stern, Director of Education & Engagement at SchoolStatus. “Instead of just flagging absences, we’re helping educators strengthen family relationships through personalized, respectful communication that meets families where they are—ultimately getting students back in the classroom and keeping them there.”

Proven Results from District Partners

SchoolStatus recently analyzed attendance data from 122 California districts and 800,000 students. It demonstrated a 21% drop in chronic absenteeism over three years, SchoolStatus partners compared to non-partner averages. These partner districts now average 93.45% daily attendance, closing in on pre-pandemic norms.

Partner highlights include:

Roseville City School District, where chronic absenteeism has fallen 43% in two years, with chronic rates among English Language Learners dropping from 13% to 7%.Los Nietos School District, where chronic absenteeism has been reduced by 51% in two years, with chronic rates among Special Education students dropping from 29% to 17%, and English Language Learners from 16% to 12%.

“SchoolStatus’ support has been instrumental in helping us significantly improve our attendance rates and decrease chronic absenteeism,” said Dr. Ramiro Rubalcaba, Superintendent of Los Nietos SD. “As a result of this partnership, our students are not only attending school more consistently, they are also showing remarkable growth academically and demonstrating greater engagement overall.”

Leadership Beyond Technology

SchoolStatus is a central voice in California’s family engagement and attendance recovery efforts. As a strategic partner of the California Association of Supervisors of Child Welfare and Attendance (CASCWA) for over 15 years, SchoolStatus helps shape the conversation through statewide conferences, media, and thought leadership.

Experts in data analytics, education policy, and school communications have recently:

Co-presented with Redondo Beach USD at ACSA’s Every Child Counts SymposiumBeen spotlighted at CASCWA by Garden Grove USD and Roseville City SDAuthored a widely-read EdSource op-ed on targeted approaches to address chronic absenteeism by grade levelPublished new attendance research cited by NPR and Yahoo News for data showing California partner districts bucking national trends

“Our data reveals that progress comes from combining early-warning systems with authentic family engagement,” Dr. Stern noted. “While we’ve seen major gains in elementary grades, we’re now helping districts address the more complex attendance challenges facing today’s high school students—where social factors, mental health concerns, and economic pressures create unique barriers to consistent attendance.”

As we anticipate the challenges and opportunities ahead in the 2025-2026 school year, SchoolStatus remains committed to supporting the dedicated educators and administrators across California’s K-12 schools who work tirelessly to help students succeed. By continuing to provide the tools, insights, and partnership that districts need, we stand ready to help make every school day count. Our 360° approach recognizes that when family engagement, teacher satisfaction, and attendance all improve together, we’re not just changing today’s classrooms—we’re building a stronger future for California’s students and communities for generations to come.

If you’re struggling with chronic absenteeism, download SchoolStatus’s free attendance tracker and other quick-start attendance resources in the Resource Library.

About SchoolStatus

SchoolStatus believes that student success starts with empowering the team behind it: educators, families, and administrators. SchoolStatus delivers high-impact, data-driven solutions that help districts take targeted action to improve attendance, strengthen family engagement, support educator development, and simplify workflows. Partnering with thousands of districts across the U.S., SchoolStatus serves over 22 million students across all 50 states.

For more information on how SchoolStatus can help reverse chronic absenteeism in your district, visit schoolstatus.com.

Media Contact:

Annmarie Ely

Zer0 to 5ive for SchoolStatus

schoolstatus@0to5.com

267.454.4686

Media Contact

Marico Fayre, SchoolStatus, 1 9714297266, marico.fayre@schoolstatus.com, https://schoolstatus.com/

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prweb.com/releases/schoolstatus-partners-with-over-half-of-california-districts-to-improve-attendance-302448948.html

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Chef Robotics Physical AI Models Can Now Automate Baked Goods Packing

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SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Chef Robotics, a leader in physical AI for the food industry, today announced that Chef robots can now automate tray assembly for baked goods packing. The application places baked products, such as burger buns, chocolate chip cookies, biscotti, butter cookies, biscuits, fortune cookies, granola bars, rusks, and shortbreads into trays and packaging containers before sealing.

Watch Chef robots in action.

Baked goods packing has historically been difficult to automate for high-mix production. Each item behaves differently on the production line—a granola bar compresses under the wrong grip, while a biscotti or rusk can crack if placed at the wrong angle. Surface textures range from glazed and smooth to crumbly and irregular, and strict presentation requirements leave little room for error. This variability has made it challenging for automation systems to reliably handle baked goods at production speeds, leaving food manufacturers dependent on manual labor and traditional bakery equipment.

To address this, Chef built its baked goods packing application on its existing piece-picking capability, which uses Chef’s AI-powered computer vision and physical AI models trained across diverse real-world production environments. This allows Chef robots to assess each item’s position, shape, and orientation in real time and determine how to pick the items from the pan and place them quickly and precisely without damaging them.

The baked goods packing application supports four distinct placement capabilities.

First, Chef’s vision system detects the angle at which each item sits in the pan and reorients it after picking, placing it on the tray at the exact angle required, regardless of its original position, enabling retail-ready presentation for SKUs that require precise angular placement.

Second, Chef robots can place multiple baked goods into the same packaging container in a single automated pass, completing full tray assembly without manual intervention.

Third, for packaging containers with multiple small compartments, Chef robots can precisely place items into each designated section, including multiple items in the same compartment, using Chef’s AI vision model to detect compartment positions and orientations in real time.

Fourth, Chef’s vision system identifies the exact center of each tray and places every item at a predefined offset from that center, ensuring a uniform, consistent arrangement across every pack regardless of how trays arrive on the conveyor.

For food manufacturers evaluating bakery systems and baked goods packaging automation, the application offers higher throughput, reduced labor dependency, and consistent presentation across shifts. The capability runs on Chef’s existing robotic hardware and software, allowing manufacturers to deploy it without requiring any changes to their production lines.

Chef’s baked goods packing application is available in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the UK and is included as part of Chef’s robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing model.

About Chef Robotics
Chef is the first company to have commercialized a scalable AI-driven food robotics solution. With over 104 million servings made in production, Chef leverages ChefOS, an AI platform for food manipulation, to offer a Robotics-as-a-Service solution that helps industry-leading food companies increase production volume and meet demand. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Chef aims to empower humans to do what humans do best by accelerating the advent of intelligent machines. Visit https://chefrobotics.ai to learn more.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chef-robotics-physical-ai-models-can-now-automate-baked-goods-packing-302756923.html

SOURCE Chef Robotics

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Chef Robotics Physical AI Models Can Now Automate Baked Goods Packing

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SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Chef Robotics, a leader in physical AI for the food industry, today announced that Chef robots can now automate tray assembly for baked goods packing. The application places baked products, such as burger buns, chocolate chip cookies, biscotti, butter cookies, biscuits, fortune cookies, granola bars, rusks, and shortbreads into trays and packaging containers before sealing.

Watch Chef robots in action.

Baked goods packing has historically been difficult to automate for high-mix production. Each item behaves differently on the production line—a granola bar compresses under the wrong grip, while a biscotti or rusk can crack if placed at the wrong angle. Surface textures range from glazed and smooth to crumbly and irregular, and strict presentation requirements leave little room for error. This variability has made it challenging for automation systems to reliably handle baked goods at production speeds, leaving food manufacturers dependent on manual labor and traditional bakery equipment.

To address this, Chef built its baked goods packing application on its existing piece-picking capability, which uses Chef’s AI-powered computer vision and physical AI models trained across diverse real-world production environments. This allows Chef robots to assess each item’s position, shape, and orientation in real time and determine how to pick the items from the pan and place them quickly and precisely without damaging them.

The baked goods packing application supports four distinct placement capabilities.

First, Chef’s vision system detects the angle at which each item sits in the pan and reorients it after picking, placing it on the tray at the exact angle required, regardless of its original position, enabling retail-ready presentation for SKUs that require precise angular placement.

Second, Chef robots can place multiple baked goods into the same packaging container in a single automated pass, completing full tray assembly without manual intervention.

Third, for packaging containers with multiple small compartments, Chef robots can precisely place items into each designated section, including multiple items in the same compartment, using Chef’s AI vision model to detect compartment positions and orientations in real time.

Fourth, Chef’s vision system identifies the exact center of each tray and places every item at a predefined offset from that center, ensuring a uniform, consistent arrangement across every pack regardless of how trays arrive on the conveyor.

For food manufacturers evaluating bakery systems and baked goods packaging automation, the application offers higher throughput, reduced labor dependency, and consistent presentation across shifts. The capability runs on Chef’s existing robotic hardware and software, allowing manufacturers to deploy it without requiring any changes to their production lines.

Chef’s baked goods packing application is available in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the UK and is included as part of Chef’s robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing model.

About Chef Robotics
Chef is the first company to have commercialized a scalable AI-driven food robotics solution. With over 104 million servings made in production, Chef leverages ChefOS, an AI platform for food manipulation, to offer a Robotics-as-a-Service solution that helps industry-leading food companies increase production volume and meet demand. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Chef aims to empower humans to do what humans do best by accelerating the advent of intelligent machines. Visit https://chefrobotics.ai to learn more.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chef-robotics-physical-ai-models-can-now-automate-baked-goods-packing-302756923.html

SOURCE Chef Robotics

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Air Products to Expand Industrial Gas Supply for Samsung Electronics’ Next-Generation Semiconductor Fab in South Korea

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New investment underscores the company’s long-term commitment to Korea and its leading role in the global semiconductor industry 

LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa., April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Air Products (NYSE:APD), a world-leading industrial gases company and serving Samsung globally, today announced it has been selected by Samsung to supply industrial gases for its new advanced semiconductor fab in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea.

Under the agreement, Air Products will build, own and operate multiple state-of-the-art production facilities and a bulk specialty gas supply system to supply nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and hydrogen for Samsung’s new semiconductor fab. The new facilities are expected to come onstream in multiple phases from 2028 through 2030.

Air Products has a long track record of executing multiple phase expansions in Pyeongtaek to support Samsung’s growing manufacturing needs. This latest project represents Air Products’ largest investment to date in the semiconductor industry and will establish Pyeongtaek as the company’s single largest operations site globally supporting the electronics industry. 

“Air Products is honored to be selected once again by Samsung and to have their continued confidence as a trusted partner supporting their strategic growth plans,” said SR Kim, President, Air Products Korea. “This significant investment reinforces Air Products’ role as a leading global supplier to the semiconductor industry and underscores our long-standing commitment to supporting our strategic customers with safety, reliability, efficiency and excellent service.”

Air Products has served the global electronics industry for more than 40 years, supplying industrial gases safely and reliably to many of the world’s leading technology companies. The company has operated in Korea for more than 50 years and has established a strong position in electronics and manufacturing sectors.

About Air Products

Air Products (NYSE: APD) is a world-leading industrial gases company in operation for over 85 years focused on serving energy, environmental, and emerging markets and generating a cleaner future. The Company supplies essential industrial gases, related equipment and applications expertise to customers in dozens of industries, including refining, chemicals, metals, electronics, manufacturing, medical and food. As the leading global supplier of hydrogen, Air Products also develops, engineers, builds, owns and operates some of the world’s largest clean hydrogen projects, supporting the transition to low- and zero-carbon energy in the industrial and heavy-duty transportation sectors. Through its sale of equipment businesses, the Company also provides turbomachinery, membrane systems and cryogenic containers globally.

Air Products had fiscal 2025 sales of $12 billion from operations in approximately 50 countries. For more information, visit airproducts.com or follow us on LinkedInXFacebook or Instagram.

This release contains “forward-looking statements” within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on management’s expectations and assumptions as of the date of this release and are not guarantees of future performance. While forward-looking statements are made in good faith and based on assumptions, expectations and projections that management believes are reasonable based on currently available information, actual performance and financial results may differ materially from projections and estimates expressed in the forward-looking statements because of many factors, including the risk factors described in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2025 and other factors disclosed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, we disclaim any obligation or undertaking to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in the assumptions, beliefs or expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances upon which any such forward-looking statements are based.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/air-products-to-expand-industrial-gas-supply-for-samsung-electronics-next-generation-semiconductor-fab-in-south-korea-302757497.html

SOURCE Air Products

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