attendance awareness month

A new national initiative called Attendance Sensation Month was launched in September by Attendance Works, an Oakland-based nonprofit group.

With chronic absence costing California school districts millions and putting huge numbers of students at academic risk, schools from Willits to Los Angeles and across are working harder than ever to address the root causes of absenteeism, including student wellness, family distress and how continued students feel to adults at schoolhouse.

Schools have ever been concerned almost students missing school, but at that place's a new focus on those who are chronically absent-minded – defined as those who miss 10 percent or more of the schoolhouse year in excused or unexcused absences.

"Why are these kids gone?" asked Debra Duardo, executive managing director for Pupil Health and Human Services at the Los Angeles Unified School Commune.

"Why" has become office of a broader conversation about school reform that links chronic absenteeism to discipline policies that "push button students out," school environments that don't experience emotionally safe, and mental health concerns, such every bit students – and families – in demand of counseling and other back up.

"Yous accept to make sure that there'southward a school and a classroom that will welcome students back," said Los Angeles Unified School District Board member Steve Zimmer. "Why would y'all want to attend a schoolhouse where y'all weren't wanted?"

Educational toll

California is one of five states that does not keep a statewide tally of chronically absent students, but 10 percent of students nationwide are estimated to be chronically absent, according to a report by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Officials believe the state rate at least matches the national average, which would mean 622,099 students are missing nearly a month of school or more each yr.

Getting chronically absent students back to campus is really "less than one-half the boxing," Zimmer said. Zimmer created Educatee Recovery Day, an annual outreach effort in the district that on Sept. vi will transport school mental health workers, principals, teachers, law enforcement officers and urban center officials to knock on doors and observe out why students are not attending schoolhouse. Since 2010, the annual outreach on Student Recovery Day has resulted in a total of vi,774 domicile visits by commune and school staff, and 4,000 "recovered" students, co-ordinate to the district.

As part of the newly launched Omnipresence Awareness Month, a nationwide initiative organized by the Oakland-based nonprofit grouping Attendance Works, 25 California school superintendents from Fresno to Sacramento City to Sanger have pledged to apply attendance information to place students who are chronically absent and to help families overcome barriers to omnipresence. To ramp upwards the focus on attendance, the Oakland Unified School District terminal month released a tricky new video of students and professional football game player Marshawn Lynch, who attended Oakland public schools and UC Berkeley, dancing and singing about how they are preparing for their hereafter careers past attention school every solar day.

The starting bespeak is to make sure parents know that students endure academically, sometimes severely, when they miss classroom pedagogy, particularly in the crucial junctures of kindergarten, sixth grade and ninth grade.

Missing x percentage of kindergarten is associated with poor bookish performance in first grade; in 6th course, chronic absence is a clear indicator of a student who will likely not graduate from high schoolhouse; past 9th grade, missing 20 pct of the school year is a better predictor of dropping out than test scores, according to Attendance Works.

The carrot or the stick

Country law requires children ages 6 to eighteen to exist in schoolhouse. Whether because of philosophical conventionalities or lack of counseling resource, most California school districts traditionally have used law enforcement – court appearances, fines and even criminal charges  – to deal with parents of chronically absent students, said David Kopperud, chairman of the State School Attendance Review Board. The lath is charged with coordinating statewide policies to try to keep chronically absent students out of the juvenile justice system and in school. But Kopperud said the majority of chronically absent students are floundering because of mental health issues, including depression and drug addiction, either in themselves or family members.

More than 80 percent of students who are chronically absent in kindergarten and first grade read below grade level after third grade. Source: Applied Survey Research, May 2011

More than than lxxx percent of students who are chronically absent-minded in kindergarten and first form read beneath grade level afterward third grade. Source: Applied Survey Enquiry, May 2011

"Y'all've got a mom who is looking desperately for assistance for her son, who is suicidal," said Kopperud, recalling a phone conversation he had with a mother. Just at a meeting to address to the teen'south poor attendance, officials told the adult female, "'You've got to be a amend parent. You've got to become the kid to school,'" Kopperud said. "They talk about the compulsory education law, but there is no mention of mental health. They don't know near the terrible divorce the parents went through."

"They are putting a Band-Assist on a much bigger sore," agreed Gordon Jackson, manager of the California Section of Education's Coordinated Student Support and Adult Education Division, which oversees health, counseling and other back up programs provided at schools. "We're asking them to look at what else is in play."

Home visits and intervention

The Los Angeles district is among the state's leaders in absenteeism intervention. The district launched a pilot Attendance Comeback Programme in 2022 after data showed students lost nearly 5 million instructional days and the district lost more $157 meg in funding because of absences, both unexcused and excused, in 2010-xi. A team of 75 social workers employed by the commune every bit pupil services and attendance counselors began making abode visits to chronically absent students from schools where attendance was the lowest.

They plant a lot going on at homes during the school mean solar day: middle schoolhouse students taking care of baby siblings while their parents worked, kindergartners whose mothers wanted to keep them dwelling house, and loftier schoolhouse students who had been told by schools "don't come up back" following discipline issues.

"We'll find a lot of teenagers that are just at that place and they're not happy," said Duardo, of Los Angeles Unified. "They've given upward hope. They don't know how to get reconnected."

One time the root cause is identified, the trouble solving begins. Social workers and families brainstorm virtually child care options, look through pages of kindergarten curriculum to let parents know that their student is at risk of falling seriously behind, and talk about counseling and academic support programs to help a pupil re-enter.

LAUSD Absenteeism and Revenue Loss

Los Angeles Unified School District students lost nearly 5 one thousand thousand instructional days and the district lost more than $157 million in funding because of absences, both unexcused and excused, in 2010-11. Source: Los Angeles Unified Schoolhouse District

Social workers aim to make firsthand referrals, ofttimes to one of the xiii educatee wellness centers or to ane of the eight mental health clinics on Los Angeles Unified campuses. Some problems are peculiarly tough to address, such as mothers who are victims of domestic violence and also depressed to get all of the children out the door every mean solar day.

"What nosotros're trying to do is achieve out to parents and say we know you care about your child," Duardo said, "we know that in that location are issues y'all're facing, and we're available to assist yous solve some of those issues."

Finding solutions

A growing number of districts are taking like solutions-based approaches.

In the Chula Vista Unproblematic School District, schoolhouse nurses piece of work with parents to reassure them that their child with asthma will be safety at school. Asthma is one of the leading causes of student absences, simply with proper direction, it needn't be.

"They work out a 'what if' scenario, an asthma programme," said Lisa Butler, student placement manager at the Chula Vista district. "We go permission to administer medication, if everyone feels comfortable with that. And nosotros say it'south in the plan: if he's still cough half an 60 minutes subsequently school started, he's supposed to go back to the school nurse and reevaluate."

Three school districts in the far northern office of the state – Willits Unified, Laytonville Unified and Round Valley Unified – have worked together to compare each district's attendance data trends with results from the California Healthy Kids Survey in 2010-eleven, a survey of educatee resiliency, protective factors, and take a chance behaviors by the California Department of Education. Although no students were identified by proper noun, staff found a correlation between mental health and attendance patterns.

"We found kids who were engaging in negative behaviors, or who had said they had been depressed for two or more weeks, too were more probable to have chronic truancy," said Pat Sanger, project managing director for Building Resiliency Opportunities for the North County, the federally funded Safe Schools Healthy Students initiative that works with the three districts. To address the issue, the districts formed partnerships with social service agencies to improve student services for mental health, violence and substance abuse issues. Sanger said her squad is even so compiling information to measure impact to run into if chronic absenteeism has been reduced.

The results in Los Angeles accept been positive. Schools participating in the Attendance Comeback Project saw a decline in chronic absenteeism of 13.4 percent in kindergarten and 4.nine per centum in 9th form, co-ordinate to district data betwixt 2022 and 2012. Part of what has worked, Duardo said, is holding everyone – students, families, teachers, staff, law enforcement and community members – accountable for getting children to school and helping them stay there.

Duardo calls it a culture modify that is rooted in making school an engaging identify for students, teachers and parents – and to address the root causes of chronic absence, even if the cause is the oft-reported remark that "school is boring."

"There's no question some kids are bored," she said. "Information technology'southward working with teachers about how to engage better, and it's working with kids: If school is deadening, what'southward your role in improving your experience?"

Jane Meredith Adams covers student wellness. Contact her and follow her @JaneAdams.

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