School Absences Show LAUSD Students Still Need More Support

On the first day of school, 91% of enrolled Los Angeles Unified students showed up, a slight increase from the previous school year, but still below pre-pandemic levels.

The rate of California students who missed at least 10% of school tripled during the first full year of in-person school. About 30% of California students were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year.

“We're in need of aggressive recalibration in terms of everything we do and the approaches we take,” said LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, just before meeting with two chronically absent students and their mom at their North Hollywood apartment last Friday.

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There’s an educational and financial cost to chronic absenteeism. Educators say they can’t help students catch up if they’re not in the classroom and schools with lower average attendance can lose state funding.

Carvalho said the goal is to boost last year’s average attendance rate of 90% about 5 percentage points, which would put the district back to its pre-pandemic norm.

“Chronic absence is usually a symptom of a lot of things,” said Joseph Bishop, who leads the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools. “It's not usually because students don't want to come to school. It's that they're struggling.”

Access to transportation, health care, and concerns about safety have long prevented students from attending school, but researchers say these reasons alone don’t account for the steep rise in absenteeism since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“My concern is always that by the time we've put our finger on some type of solution, cohorts of students have already just disengaged from the system,” said Kevin Gee, a UC Davis professor who has studied what keeps kids away from school for more than a decade.

While there’s not yet widespread consensus on why students have missed so much school in the last few years, Carvalho said conversations with more than 9,000 families last year identified three trends: Illness (not for COVID-19); child care; and mental health.

Non-COVID-19 illness 

Several parents LAist talked to ahead of the school year said illnesses caused their children to miss so much school they received letters about truancy in the mail.

This month, even as positive COVID-19 cases and related emergency visits rise, the district walked back strict health guidance for sending sick students to school during the pandemic.

“I think we need to overcome the pandemic mentality that any little sniffle should be addressed by keeping the child at home,” Carvalho said.

The district’s chief medical director, Dr. Smita Malhotra, said parents should send their kids to school if they have cold symptoms, like a runny nose, and test negative for COVID-19.

“Your child can wear a mask at school when they have these mild symptoms,” Malhotra wrote in a Saturday message to LAUSD families.

For some families, this change in policy is more reason for concern.

“For my kids, I think they haven't wanted to go to school because they feel the school doesn't take COVID seriously anymore,” said East Hollywood parent Velma, who called into LAist 89.3’s public affairs show AirTalk on Monday.

Child care

This year, every child who turns 4 years old on or by Sept. 1 can enroll in a free preschool program called transitional kindergarten, but there’s still a vast unmet need for child care for younger children.

“In households where the parents work, single parents environments, you have the older high school student caring for younger siblings,” Carvalho said.

There are enough licensed child care spaces for about 11% of infants here, according to an analysis for the Los Angeles County Child Care Planning Committee. The care that is available often costs more than tuition at one of the state’s public universities.

Mental health 

The percentage of students who reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness increased 40% between 2009 and 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2021, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said the pandemic had made the country’s youth mental health crisis even worse.

Here are a few of the ways the district is trying to increase mental health services for students:

• Hiring more school psychologists and social workers as required by a labor agreement with teachers and support staff reached earlier this year.
• Partnering with the Los Angeles County Office of Education to offer virtual therapy. 

Teacher relationships

Friday’s visit to North Hollywood revealed another reason students might have drifted away from school: a lack of meaningful relationships with educators.

Amanda Garcia, 13, missed more than 40 days of middle school last year.

“I feel like the teachers are really difficult to, like, work with,” Garcia said. Garcia said her schedule changed unexpectedly and she had to switch classes midway through the year for reasons that she still doesn’t understand.

Sisters Mya Morales (left) and Amanda Garcia (right) at home in their North Hollywood apartment. Morales, 15, said during the pandemic lockdown, her sleep schedule changed and it was hard to wake up in time to get to school by 8:30. She's now looking forward to the new school year. “I'm excited to have more opportunities to get my grades,” Morales said.

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Mariana Dale

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LAist

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California has had a teacher shortage for years and schools like Garcia’s, where most students come from low-income households, often struggle to retain teachers.

“Teachers also play a critical role in ensuring that schools are safe, welcoming environments,” UC Davis’ Gee said. “If we don't have the kind of teacher workforce to be able to develop those kinds of close connections with students, that's also going to be a challenge.”

What parents need to know

If your child is tardy, leaves early, or misses a whole day of school, it’s important to let the district know why. Students with unexcused absences can lose access to extracurricular activities and eventually be referred to the L.A. County District Attorney’s office.

Absences related to illness and injury with a doctor's note, medical appointments, and funerals of immediate family members qualify to be excused under state law. School administrators can also excuse absences for other reasons including religious holidays or traditions with a written note.

LAUSD parents and caregivers can download and complete this form for elementary school and this form for high school to excuse their child’s absence.