Los Angeles Unified School District has revealed that students often miss class are costing them a great amount of money.
The multi-million dollar problem involves their youngest students...kindergartners! New district data show that 1 in 4 kindergartners misses 15 or more days of school each year.
The Los Angeles Daily News reported schools get paid by the state for every day a child is in school. In 2016-17, LA Unified lost about $630 million in revenues as over 80,000 students — or 14.3 percent of all students — were chronically absent, which is defined as missing 15 or more days, according to a LA Unified Advisory Task Force’s report.
Due to the large amount of absences, the district has designated “Attendance Matters Day" hoping school staff, parents and students will keep the number of days any students is absent to seven or less.
The District's superintendent believes that even more important than the loss of revenue is the learning loss. Fewer absences also mean higher student achievement. According to the task force’s report last year, children who are chronically absent in preschool, kindergarten, and first grade are much less likely to read at grade level by the third grade.
Parent's, if you're worried about student attendance, here are the district’s plans to attack absences this year (from The Los Angeles Daily News):
- Direct mail/postcard campaign
- Phone calls
- Attendance improvement incentives
- Counseling
- ‘Student Attendance Matters’ events
- Beginning with the first day of school, SHHS staff made phone calls and conducted home visits to families of students who were chronically absent last year or who were absent on the first days of school.
- Also, a new “Attendance Matters Day” will replace the formerly-dubbed “Student Recovery Day” and will be held Friday, Sept. 7. The purpose of the “Attendance Matters Day”.
Parents! Feel free to reach out about this. I'd love to hear what you guys think about this.
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