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The rate of chronic absenteeism in schools, defined as a student missing classes for 10 or more days, skyrocketed everywhere in California during the pandemic. Absenteeism has stayed at an elevated level since then, as students struggle to regain their footing following their return to in-person learning.
“We have made a major focus on this area,” said Aromas-San Juan School District Superintendent Barbara Dill Varga. “We’ve looked deeply at groups that are the most chronically absent and really drilled down to the student and family level to understand what kinds of support people need to get to school.”
In San Benito County as a whole, absenteeism more than doubled in the first school year impacted by the pandemic, rising from 11.1% in 2018-19 to 28.9% in 2019-20. The situation continued to worsen.
According to District Coordinator of Assessment and Data, Sam Torres, Anzar High School fell seriously behind. The school saw a 41.5% absenteeism rate in 2021-22, compared to an average of 30% across the state. Torres said that the 2022-23 school year rate dropped to 28.1%, a great improvement and nearer to the state’s 24.3% rate.
To discover where the district’s schools are most vulnerable to absenteeism, the data is broken down into various student groups, defined by any demographic that includes 30 or more students. According to Director of Curriculum and Instruction Jivan Dhaliwal, the highest at-risk students are Hispanic students, English learners, students with disabilities and the socioeconomically disadvantaged.
“A couple of things may be contributing to the problem,” Dill Varga said. “Some students may have gotten used to staying at home and using online learning and preferred that because they avoided whatever they didn’t like about in-person instruction.”
She said distance learning may also have impacted social-emotional health and adjusted national attitudes about what is normal. This can have an impact on early learners at Aromas and San Juan schools, for example, who never had any other experience than being at home for lessons, making it more challenging to integrate them into in-person classes.
The absenteeism rate at those two schools fits the statewide pattern, as Aromas School’s rate jumped from 4.6% before the pandemic to 23.5% in 2021-22, and San Juan School went from a pre-pandemic rate of 10.8% to 41.6% in 2021-22.
Concern over catching COVID-19 is another reason for student reluctance to go to school, but Anzar Principal Angela Crawley told BenitoLink that part of the problem has nothing to do with the pandemic.
“Some of our families take an extended vacation over Christmas break,” she said. “We already offer three weeks of winter break, and a lot of families are taking two or more additional weeks on top of that.” Also, Crawley said some of the students taking independent study do not always turn their work in and are not credited, which also contributes to the high rates.
Dill Varga said another reason the numbers may look bad is that there are a very small number of students at each of the three schools. The California Department of Education’s 2022-23 School Accountability Report Card lists only 276 students for Anzar High School, 381 for Aromas School, and 335 for San Juan School, for a total of 992 students. According to the superintendent, this means that just a few chronically absent students can have an outsized impact on the percentages.
“San Juan Elementary, for example, has a higher percentage of students with disabilities,” she said. “We have at least three students that are medically immunocompromised who get sick fairly often and then need to be out extended times. That adds up quickly in the data.”
There are also students who Director of Special Education and Student Services, Michelle Croucher, refers to as “double dippers.”
“You might have a student who’s Hispanic, who’s an English language learner, and who’s also a special ed student,” she said. “Their absences are going to get counted in multiple categories that we are being held accountable for.”
For habitually absent students, the Aromas-San Juan School District has been using direct intervention to reach the parents and students and made substantial headway in combating the problem in all three of the district’s schools.
The Student Attendance Review Board process is of particular use as a standardized way of holding students and parents responsible for consistent attendance. There are five steps to the process:
- After a student has missed three days, parents will be notified that their child is at risk of truancy.
- If absenteeism becomes a pattern, parents will again be notified and will sign an attendance contract with the principal.
- If the absences still continue, parents will again be notified and be referred to a Student Attendance Review Board hearing with district representatives at the sheriff’s office, where they and the student will explain the reasons for chronic absenteeism.
- The student may be referred to counseling, probation, substance abuse programs or Child Protective Services, and a one-year attendance contract will be signed.
- Any violation of the contract can result in the district attorney issuing fines or taking other legal actions.
Croucher took families through the attendance review process earlier this school year. “We let the parents know that we want to work with them on what we can do to support their child,” Croucher said. “It’s whatever they need. Is there a transportation issue? Is there some counseling that needs to happen? Is there a struggle in school where the student needs additional interventions or assistance?”
Additional steps might include offering parenting classes, providing mental health referrals, suggesting checkups with the family’s doctor or identifying issues with students who are discouraged because they are struggling in school.
“Maybe they don’t know how to interact with peers, or they have social anxiety,” Croucher said. “Maybe they got used to being in bed and don’t want to get out of bed. We found some might have a learning disability that wasn’t brought to light before and we’re evaluating that as well.”
A number of creative steps are being considered to encourage students to attend classes, including an “attendance club” where students who arrive early for school can participate in a fun activity, such as playing video games as a group.
“If they know that there’s something that they’re interested in to start the day,” Dill Varga said, “Then maybe they will get energized about coming to school—and then they’re going to be at school for the rest of the day.”
She said the most important question is how to reawaken parents and students to the critical importance of going to school.
“At some of those meetings,” she said, “when you explain that the responsibility is on the student, you see them wake up. You see them understand: ‘This is on me. And this is a huge problem. I don’t want to impact my family. I don’t want to set my future up for failure.’”
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