The Brief

While California’s school truancy law remains on the books, school districts in recent years appear to have become less and less likely to enforce punitive measures against parents.

Multiple phone calls, emails, letters and requests for meetings are what parents should expect if their child is deemed truant. If those steps don’t get the child back into school, state law gives districts the right to take parents to court.

But how often that happens is up to school officials and prosecutors and, clearly, officials say, the times have changed. Punitive measures have been shown to be less effective, especially if the reason for the child missing school is beyond the parent’s control.

The charges parents can face

While parents have been arrested in California for their children being habitually absent from school, it is unclear how many cases resulted in criminal charges. According to state law, a district can declare a student truant and refer them to the district attorney after three unexcused absences of more than 30 minutes during the school year, potentially facing fines and even jail time.

“It’s fair to say that most districts go beyond what the law requires in terms of trying to address these challenges internally at the district level prior to engaging the criminal justice system,” said Jonathan Raven, assistant CEO of the California District Attorneys Association.

State law gives prosecutors wide discretion over how to charge parents when their child is truant, from an infraction, akin to a traffic violation, to a misdemeanor, contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

How big of a problem is absenteeism in California?

Chronic absenteeism in California schools is part of a national crisis over children missing school, especially during the pandemic. In California, the percentage of chronically absent students skyrocketed from the pre-pandemic rate of 12.1% in 2018-19 to 30% in 2021-22, after the pandemic. The percentage dropped to nearly 25% in 2022-23.

The state’s truancy law grew out of Kamala Harris’s efforts as a prosecutor to stem the number of high school dropouts who ended up in the criminal justice system.

In San Francisco, where she was the district attorney from 2004 to 2010, she implemented a truancy initiative that introduced the threat of prosecution of parents and guardians when children habitually missed school. That initiative became the model for a 2010 state law that Harris sponsored which adopted strict penalties for parents of truant students: a fine not to exceed $2,000, jail time not to exceed one year, or both.

The penalties could be applied if a student was habitually truant, meaning they missed 10% or more of the school year and only after parents had been offered a range of support services to address the student’s truancy. Truancy courts were created where the penalties could be deferred so long as the students begin attending school. While attorney general from 2011 to 2017, her office created an on-line truancy hub with truancy reports from 2013 to 2016.

Here's how the law led to arrests in Orange County

The first arrests under the law were in 2011 of five parents in Orange County. The arrest option has since become controversial as districts focus first on how to solve the problems leading to truancy. During her 2019 presidential campaign, Harris stood by the goals of the law but insisted in a podcast interview at the time, that she “never sent a parent to jail” when she was a district attorney. Even though the 2010 state law specifically changed the penal code to include fines and jail time as potential penalties in truancy cases, she said in the same 2019 interview that she regretted knowing some district attorneys had criminalized parents under that state law.

California’s law specifies that with students who are habitually truant, the goal is to keep young people out of the juvenile justice system and in school.

State education law lists over a dozen reasons for excusing students from school, but most excused absences, school officials say, are related to illness and mental health. Unexcused absences often mean that students lacked documentation such as a note from a doctor, or that they provided no reason for their absence or that the reason they provided does not qualify as an excusable absence.

While six out of 10 absences were excused during the 2022-23 school year, four out of 10 were unexcused, state data shows. Both numbers were similar to pre-pandemic levels. The 2023-24 data has not yet been released.

A case study in Santa Clara County points to a 'powerful solution'

In Santa Clara County, just south of San Francisco, for example, a prosecutor from the district attorney’s office speaks with parents at the start of the school year.

“I go to back-to-school nights to speak not about the law and its consequences, but about attendance and its importance, and particularly attendance in the earliest grades,” said Alisha Schoen, community prosecutor for Santa Clara’s district attorney’s office.

Educators and researchers highlight targeted and constant communication with families — such as phone calls, emails, texts, letters and direct, in-person contact — as a powerful solution to chronic absences. In Santa Clara County, school districts conduct home visits if a student is near truancy.

If that communication doesn’t result in the student attending school regularly, the family is then referred to the local student attendance review board, SARB. The SARB will open a case during which the family must sign an attendance contract stipulating their child will attend school regularly.

With methods in place to help students return to school, attendance issues are most often solved at the school or district level, said Schoen.

The likelihood that parents are prosecuted

But if the student continues missing school, despite all interventions, the student attendance review board then has the discretion to send the case to the local district attorney’s office, at which point the parents could be prosecuted.

Those cases go to Schoen, who might either issue the parents an infraction, like a traffic violation, which is not punishable with jail time but could carry a fine, or decide that the district or school must take additional action in addressing the absences prior to involving the court.

“The cases that I file in my court are almost always cases where the parents refused to come to the school site meeting, did not come to the SARB, didn’t answer the door at the home visit, so this is the necessary step to get them to the table so that then we can talk about the problem and offer supportive services,” Schoen said.

Upon being issued the infraction, the parents then enter what Santa Clara County calls a collaborative truancy court, through which they offer students and their parents access to a county behavioral health social worker, enroll parents in a 10-week in-person or online parenting class, and assign a caseworker to families who might be experiencing far-reaching challenges such as homelessness or unemployment.

“Our throughline is that truancy is a red flag that tells us this child or their family are experiencing some crisis, and we have to recognize that red flag as such, and then get the supportive services to the family to address that underlying crisis so that the attendance can then improve,” said Schoen.

What actually happens when a parent pleads guilty

Schoen described how they issue infractions, for example, not misdemeanors; if parents plead guilty, they request the lowest possible fine; and they make every effort to dismiss the case to avoid fines.

“We don’t believe that assigning a large fine will improve their child’s attendance, and it could possibly have a negative effect,” said Schoen.

Of over 234,000 students enrolled in Santa Clara County during the 2023-2024 school year, Schoen’s office heard 130 truancy cases — although some of those cases were from the previous school year. Infractions were issued to 34 parents; 28 were dismissed as student attendance improved, and six parents pleaded guilty. Those six were issued fines, and their court fees were waived. The remaining cases will be continuing this year.

In the past, some counties are known to have taken a more punitive approach.

Merced County in 2017 initiated an anti-truancy effort that included the arrest of 10 parents for failing to send their children to school. They were charged with misdemeanors, contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Jennifer McHugh, a deputy district attorney in Yolo County, considers it “very unlikely” that she would support jailing parents in truancy cases because once the case is over, “have you really solved the problem?”

How one district tries to resolve the underlying problem

In the last year, McHugh got school district referrals for 15-20 students who were excessively truant.

“In the past year, it’s only been one district that’s sent me names of truant students, and I don’t think they’re sending me everyone who’s been truant three or more times, because those would be way more people,” said McHugh. “They’re sending me the people who are excessively truant, you know, 60, 70, 80% of the time that this child’s truant kind of cases.”

Those students and their families entered mediation with the district attorney’s office. During mediation, McHugh meets for 30 minutes to an hour at the county office of education — “a neutral place,” she said — to sign an attendance contract. The meeting includes the student, their parents, McHugh, student support services from the district who have made previous contact with the parents, and others with direct knowledge of the student’s situation.

The point of the contract is not perfect attendance; rather, “good enough” attendance is what McHugh is looking for in order to avoid further court involvement. It’s up to every district to decide when to prosecute.

“My perspective on it is we’re trying to resolve the issue. We’re trying to get them into school,” she said.

Of the 15-20 students in mediation, only two cases were filed against parents. In one case, the student began attending school and the case was dismissed. The second case is pending.

Are socioeconomically disadvantaged kids treated worse?

While the law stipulates that students with many absences are truant, language today describes the problem as chronic absenteeism, a situation that can be fixed with the proper supports. Another issue is who is targeted when district attorneys get involved in fighting truancy or chronic absenteeism.

“The problem is having kids being labeled unexcused, it’s not equally distributed,” said Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit that works to improve student attendance.

Her research on unexcused absences, published last year in a PACE report, also found that California “schools serving more socioeconomically disadvantaged students communicate more punitive approaches.”

Certain demographics of students are more likely to have unexcused absences: Black, Native American, Latino, and Pacific Islander, regardless of socioeconomic status, along with low-income students, the study found.

Why some say the law should only be used as a 'last resort'

Schools serving students who are socioeconomically disadvantaged were far more likely “to publish policies stating that truancy would result in suspension of driver’s licenses, loss of school privileges like extracurricular participation, and Saturday school or in-school detention,” the report said.

The researchers reviewed the school handbooks of 40 California middle and high schools — half of the schools had a population of over 90% of socioeconomically disadvantaged students and the other half had a population of less than 50% of socioeconomically disadvantaged students.

There are some biases in the system “around how absences are treated and who gets labeled unexcused,” Chang told EdSource. “And sometimes that’s because we don’t have the supports and resources to really do outreach to families.”

She added, “When the truancy laws got created, you didn’t have chronic absence even as a metric or even as an accountability metric for schools, and by having chronic absence as an accountability metric, you are saying: ‘Hey, schools, you’ve got to do something about this.’ So it’s not just the court system that has evolved over time. There is a pretty broad standing consensus that you want to invest in prevention first and you use a legal system as a last resort.”

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Rabbi Amy Bernstein says the wind-whipped fire in January 2025 that scorched much of the Pacific Palisades, destroying her home and damaging her synagogue, “blew everything open” for the community’s faith leaders.

“If our hearts must break, let them break open,” said the rabbi, who leads Kehillat Israel where 300 families out of 900 lost their homes. “This tragedy has really pushed us closer to one another. We’re working to change the things we need changed.”

Faith leaders both in the Pacific Palisades and in Altadena and Pasadena — devastated by the pair of fires that tore across Southern California — have relied on interfaith and community partnerships to rally congregants who are picking up the pieces 16 months later.

They’ve had to learn on the fly about insurance coverage and local land use regulations while still trying to keep their scattered flock together and raising money for basic needs. Pastors in Altadena have had to fight to protect the rights of Black people who decades ago found pathways to home ownership in that community despite redlining — but now risk losing their land to outside developers who sense an investment opportunity.

And throughout this span, faith leaders have had to cater to the emotional and spiritual needs of their communities and think about how they want to rebuild their sanctuaries that were lost or damaged in the fire. More than a dozen houses of worship burned to the ground or were damaged.

Interfaith relationships have become stronger after the fires

This would have been difficult for faith leaders to handle but for the interfaith relationships that became closer and stronger after the fires, said the Rev. Grace Park, associate pastor at Pacific Palisades Presbyterian Church, which burned down.

Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Jews and yogis have not just found common ground in human suffering and loss, but have learned how to lean on one another in a time of dire need, she said.

“It’s a sense of mutual affection and respect, learning from each other and leaning on one another,” Park said. “We’re sharing the joys and the deep valleys of what it means to lead through a time of tragedy.”

Brother Satyananda, a senior monk at the Self Realization Fellowship, lost his living quarters and belongings in the fire. Much of the campus, started by Paramahamsa Yogananda who brought ancient spiritual practices from India to the West, fortunately survived the fire.

Satyananda recalls one day when Bernstein picked up on his sadness and offered him “motherly compassion.”

“We share the same profession where we’re tuned to people in need,” he said. “Now, our relationship has changed because we’re tuning into each other. There’s a greater level of trust.”

Pastor BJ King, who leads LoveLand LifeCenter, worked with the late Rev. Cecil B. Murray to heal communities and build interfaith coalitions after the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

“Back then, there was a choice whether or not to get involved,” he said. “But with these fires, there is no choice. It has affected everybody.”

Pastors have had to acquire new skills

King’s congregation has switched to online services after their leased church building in Altadena suffered smoke damage. Twelve families lost their homes. In addition to helping meet people’s basic needs, King has created a program organizing gatherings to connect therapists with those in need of mental health.

“Many people didn’t even know they needed that,” he said.

One of the most powerful roles faith leaders have played after the fire is to “continue to talk with power, people in charge,” said Pastor Jonathan DeCuir, who leads Victory Bible Church in Pasadena. He and others in the region have continued to meet with local officials and even conferred with Gov. Gavin Newsom to keep things moving for their communities.

DeCuir chairs the board of a nonprofit called Legacy Land Project, which provides financial aid, legal support and guidance on building contractors, as well as medical care to those affected by the fires.

The disaster has brought a level of camaraderie that DeCuir says he has never seen among the region’s clergy.

“Denominational lines have been crossed,” he said. “Even if we have different theological stances or approaches to ministry, we are all now looking at how to care for our people and community. If we don’t come together, Altadena will never ever be the same. The people won’t be there anymore. That, to me, is terrifying.”

While a church is more than a building, physical churches do appear as “beacons of hope” in traumatized communities, said Pastor Mayra Macedo-Nolan, executive director of Clergy Community Coalition in Pasadena. Her group has lobbied for houses of worship to be prioritized on the same footing as businesses in the rebuilding plan.

“When people start seeing churches rebuilding in Altadena, they’re going to feel like it’s going to be OK because the churches are coming back,” she said.

Reimagining a purposeful future

Pastor Jonathan Lewis, fourth from right, holds a groundbreaking service at the site of the burned Fountain of Life Nazarene Church to mark the beginning of its rebuilding in Altadena, Calif., April 26, 2026.

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Members of the congregation join in prayer during the groundbreaking ceremony at the site of the burned Fountain of Life Nazarene Church, marking the beginning of its rebuilding, April 26, 2026, in Altadena, Calif.

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Pastor Jonathan Lewis poses for a photo with his congregation during a groundbreaking service at the site of the burned Fountain of Life Nazarene Church, marking the beginning of its rebuilding, April 26, 2026, in Altadena, Calif.

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On April 26, the Altadena Fountain of Life Church broke ground to build a new sanctuary after their house of worship, which had stood for over three decades, was destroyed in the fire. Pastor Jonathan Lewis, who ministers to about 75, hopes the church will be ready in time for Easter next year.

“It’ll be a Resurrection Sunday for our church, too,” he said.

Alexis Duncan, who grew up in Altadena attending that church, came to the groundbreaking with her 6-year-old daughter. She lost both her home and her church building.

“It means everything to me that they’re rebuilding because I want the church to be there for my daughter as she grows up,” she said. “This new beginning gives me and my family hope and the encouragement to come back.”

Some churches like Altadena Community Church, a United Church of Christ congregation, are pausing to rethink their future purpose. The Rev. Michael Lewis, who took over in February after the previous pastor retired, said the congregation is looking into several possibilities for the one-acre lot, including affordable housing.

“We know that a church is not intended to be a landlord and the pastor is no property manager,” he said. “But, we’re also thinking about who is able to return to Altadena? How will this rich, economically diverse community that was scattered by the fire come back?”

The church has been around since the 1940s. A haven for actors, poets and musicians, the former sanctuary also served as a vibrant performance space. Lewis said they hope to incorporate a performance stage into the new facility.

“It’ll look different from what we had before,” he said. “Once we figure out how to build community, we can decide what physical structures will help us support that community.”

As for Kehillat Israel, on May 15, members will carry their Torah scrolls back to their sanctuary, marking one of the first returns by a house of worship to the Palisades since the disaster.

Judaism has had “a long history of starting over,” Bernstein said.

“It’s encoded in our cultural approach to the world, that there are things that can always be taken away from you,” she said. “But what you become can never get taken away.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday that he has requested a yearlong extension of FEMA funding for L.A. fire survivors. Without the extension, the money will run out July 9.

Now the decision on FEMA support lies with the federal government.

The funds have allowed many survivors to afford temporary housing and other daily needs. Most have yet to return home — 2 in 3 survivors who were living in Altadena or Pacific Palisades at the time of the fires are still displaced, according to the latest survey of more than 2,100 survivors by the nonprofit Department of Angels. Nearly 40% of respondents reported they will either soon run out of temporary housing insurance coverage or have already.

The situation is particularly dire for low-income households: Nearly 80% of respondents making $50,000 or less said they didn’t think they could afford housing for three months once coverage ended.

“The data is clear: This recovery is not over,” said Angela Giacchetti of the Department of Angels at a news conference organized by the Eaton Fire Collaborative in Altadena on Thursday. “If you are a survivor, you know this in your bones. For many families, it has barely begun. People have just begun to stabilize. We need federal support that reflects the scale of this disaster and systems that survivors can actually navigate and access over time.”

FEMA assistance isn’t reaching most survivors

The FEMA Individuals and Households Program can provide funding for survivors of disasters to pay for temporary housing, repair their homes, and respond to other challenges that insurance may not cover. It can also help cover costs if a survivor has no insurance.

Gil Barel has been relying on FEMA funds to pay rent on a small back house for herself and her son for the last year. She said they still haven’t been able to return to their rent-controlled Pasadena apartment because of smoke damage, though she still has to pay the rent for it.

Gil Barel is paying rent on a smoke-damaged apartment in Pasadena while FEMA funds have helped her cut the cost of temporary housing.

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Barel doesn’t know what they’ll do if the FEMA funding runs out.

“ I'm really stressed out,” she said. “I think I'm just kind of trying to put that thought aside and hope for the best.”

But in the 15 months since the fires, most survivors have not accessed FEMA funding. About 60% have received no FEMA assistance beyond the initial $770 payments dispersed in the immediate aftermath of the fires, according to the Department of Angels survey.

Many have faced denials, according to disaster case manager workers with Catholic Charities of L.A. and lawyers with Legal Aid Foundation of L.A.

That’s the situation for Gayle Nicholls-Ali and her husband, Rasheed, who lost their Altadena home of 15 years in the Eaton Fire. They’ve relied on their insurance to pay for a rental in Montrose, but that’s rapidly running out. And because they have that insurance, FEMA has denied further support.

Gayle Nicholls-Ali and her husband, Rasheed, lost their home in the Eaton Fire. They plan to rebuild, but the cost is a major hurdle.

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“A lot of our ALE [Additional Living Expenses insurance] is going to run out before we even are able to get into a house,” Nicholls-Ali said.

Without FEMA or insurance support, they’ll have to find a way to pay rent on top of a mortgage. They also face a big gap in the cost of their rebuild versus how much their insurance covers. Nicholls-Ali said without the help of FEMA and other sources of funding, recovering feels further out of reach.

Funds for long-term recovery still in limbo

FEMA funding extensions have been routine in past disasters, including the 2023 wildfires in Hawaii and after devastating flooding in North Carolina in 2024.

But the agency has faced significant cuts during the second Trump administration, and there are indications that disaster aid is becoming increasingly political. For example, President Donald Trump has approved aid for just 23% of requests from states with a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators, compared to 89% for states that with Republican governors and senators, according to an analysis by Politico.

The state has also not received more than $33 billion for long-term recovery, which can help pay for infrastructure upgrades and repairs, as well as help rebuild schools, parks and homes. That money was requested by state and local leaders shortly after the January 2025 fires and hasn’t been appropriated by Congress.

An international team of disease detectives is now racing to connect with the more than two dozen passengers who disembarked the MV Honius cruise ship on the Atlantic island of St. Helena before the hantavirus outbreak was identified.

These individuals have flown across the world, including to the United States.

The risk of further spread of this virus is low since it requires close and prolonged contact with an infected individual — and those infected seem to transmit the virus for only a brief period of time. But public health officials want to make sure the outbreak is contained.

Here's how authorities are using the practice of contact tracing to contain the outbreak and keep the hantavirus from spreading.

Contact tracing 101

The concept of modern contact tracing dates to the 1930s and was part of an effort to stop the spread of syphilis. It involves locating the close contacts of anyone who may have been infected. "By identifying people who are at risk of infection," says Preeti Malani, an infectious disease physician at the University of Michigan, "you try to get ahead when people don't have symptoms yet with the goal of preventing the infection from continuing to propagate."

This is a well-tested approach for containing an infectious disease. "It's the oldest tool in the epidemiologic toolbox," explains Malani. "We thought about this a lot early in the pandemic with COVID. But we also do contact tracing for sexually transmitted infections, for things like meningitis and even measles."

Malani likens contact tracing to monitoring ripples in a pond, "trying to prevent those outer rings from propagating by isolating individuals and by identifying individuals who might be at risk of infection."

The idea that "there's a time period where people don't have symptoms but could be harboring the virus, that's what contact tracing helps identify," says Malani.

It starts by pinpointing someone with an infection or suspected infection of the disease in question — in this case, hantavirus. Epidemiologists then look to see with whom they've recently had close contact since these individuals are more likely to have been infected.

This hunt for those with the greatest probability of infection is important. "Otherwise, it becomes an impossible web to contain because everyone is connected to everyone," says Boghuma Titanji, an infectious diseases doctor at Emory University. "So you have to stratify by high, intermediate and low-risk contacts."

The next step involves public health agencies ordering precautions for those who are infected or who may be infected but aren't showing symptoms yet. Such measures may include quarantine, so that an individual doesn't come into contact with even more people — who may then become infected.

One challenge that hantavirus presents is that its incubation period can last up to several weeks. In other words, "people take a long time to become symptomatic after they've been exposed," says Titanji. "Some of these primary contacts would have to be monitoring themselves for symptoms for up to 45 days to be at the tail end of that very long incubation period."

Aboard and ashore

The work isn't high-tech but it is painstaking, requiring officials to reconstruct the many interactions someone may have had over days or weeks.

Onboard the cruise ship, "you might have an individual who is a source of an infection," says Titanji, laying out a hypothetical example. "And then they were sitting at a dinner table with one individual who then goes back to their cabin and shares a bed with their partner who has a conversation with someone else on the deck."

Once someone disembarks the ship, the number of potential interactions can grow quite quickly. This is why officials were concerned when a KLM flight attendant fell ill after being aboard a flight with one of the infected cruise ship passengers. Fortunately, the flight attendant ultimately tested negative for hantavirus.

Titanji is heartened by what she's seen playing out so far. "It seems like the international collaborative effort has been really robust and the mechanisms for containment are in place and underway," she says.

Public health officials argue that contact tracing is a powerful approach that will reduce further spread. "We can break this chain of transmission," said Abdi Mahmoud, the director of the World Health Organization's health emergency alert and response efforts, at a press conference on Thursday.

He has good reason to be confident. Contact tracing was vital during the fight against COVID-19 and helped end the Ebola crisis in Liberia, containing the epidemic there more than a decade ago. Some of the contact tracing even involved hours-long hikes through the jungle to a remote village.

Authorities are hoping for similar success with this hantavirus outbreak.
Copyright 2026 NPR

The sky above Los Angeles State Historic Park in Chinatown will be dotted with color Saturday with the annual Kite Festival.

The festival had its beginnings as a joyful protest in 2021, back when a proposal for a Dodger Stadium gondola included cutting through the airspace above the park. Organizers say last year’s Kite Festival drew a crowd of about 7,000.

“The Kite Festival, [for] some people, it’s their favorite day in Los Angeles,” said Sue Bell Yank, executive director of Clockshop, the nonprofit arts org that runs the festival. “It’s the time when they really feel connected to their city. More so than any other time.”

This year’s programming includes a kite-making station where you can build your own flying art for a donation of $5, along with art workshops and the unveiling of a large floating, inflatable sculpture by Guatemalan kite artist Francisco Ramos.