Stars Supporting Stars
Stars Supporting Stars
The Stars Supporting Stars program reduced chronic absenteeism by 44% in its first year. We partnered with the program's creator to digitize what was working, without losing what made it work.
Lydia Larimore is a school counselor at Prince William County Schools in Virginia. In the 2023–2024 school year, she launched Stars Supporting Stars (S3), a peer mentorship program that pairs 5th-grade mentors with younger K–4 mentees for daily 1- to 2-minute check-ins. Mentors learn empathy, leadership, and communication; mentees gain attendance, academic engagement, and a consistent face who's looking out for them.
In its first year, the program reduced chronic absenteeism by 44%. Today she's recognized at the state and national levels for the work.
The program works because it's structured (every pair, every day, the same brief check-in) and because it's peer-driven (mentors take ownership of "their" mentee's day). The data the program produces (flags, attendance, Zones of Regulation feeling state) is exactly the data a school counselor needs to spot a student who's slipping.
Lydia's approach is to build the inside first. Self-confidence. Empathy. Communication. The interpersonal skills come from there. When students talk to a peer who's been there, they start regulating their own emotions. They start to explain the why behind their anger or anxiety. One mentee told Lydia: "I know how to help others now because I was helped."
That first year, the school also cut behavior referrals by two-thirds, won two Continuous Improvement Awards from the Virginia Department of Education, and achieved full state accreditation. Family engagement came next. Students who feel seen at school start bringing their families along.
The bottleneck was always the paper folder. That's the gap we built for.
This app is built and operated by CHA Business Solutions, an automation and technology agency, in partnership with Lydia Larimore. The program's design and language are hers; the tool's job is to faithfully digitize them so other schools can run S3 without needing to invent a paper workflow first.
Pilots happen with real conversations. If you sign up for a demo, you're talking to the people who built the thing and the person who built the program.
If you're a school counselor or school administrator interested in piloting the program (with or without our app), get in touch and we'll connect you with the right resources.
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