Apodaca: School district official addresses absenteeism
Calls to more aggressively address what some call a “truancy crisis” in California schools have not been lost on Phil D’Agostino, Newport-Mesa Unified’s director of student services.
D’Agostino is tasked, among other responsibilities, with the challenge of reducing unexcused absenteeism. The former Costa Mesa High School principal took over the job last spring amid the renewed statewide attention to the issue, and has since been working on rebuilding the district’s truancy prevention and intervention efforts.
In a report released by California Attorney General Kamala Harris earlier this year, truancy was called “a persistent problem” that contributes to unacceptable dropout rates, costs the state and school districts billions of dollars each year, drives crime rates higher, and hurts economic growth.
Most importantly, the report said, high rates of absenteeism “put California’s most vulnerable students at a lifelong learning disadvantage.”
According to the California Department of Education, more than 744,000, or one in five, students were truant in the 2013-14 school year, slightly more than in the previous year. Truancy is defined as three or more unexcused absences.
But the greatest focus of remediation efforts is on chronically truant students, those who miss 18 or more school days in a given year. According to one estimate cited in the attorney general’s report, more than 250,000 elementary school students were chronically absent in the last school year.
These tough-to-crack cases require a comprehensive response that is heavy on early intervention and remediation, said D’Agostino.
“It’s not normal for kids not to go to school,” he said. “We have to ask why this is happening.”
In many cases, the answer is found in the home.
“Chronic health issues, homelessness, domestic violence, work, sick family members, parental neglect, drugs and alcohol — I see all these things,” D’Agostino said.
Data indicate that chronic truancies are most often found among students from low-income backgrounds. Nevertheless, D’Agostino said that the issue can defy expectations, and that attendance problems can be found among students from all backgrounds and achievement levels.
“Sometimes even high achievers can fall into a bad pattern,” he said, citing the example of one student he worked with “who just wouldn’t get out of bed.”
Rather than bring the hammer down on students over spotty attendance — at least initially — the district uses “a mixture of support and accountability,” D’Agostino said. Its written guide on truancy emphasizes the need to understand underlying issues, and to consider the problem a cry for help.
“Truancy is the first sign of trouble; the first indicator that a young person is giving up and losing his or her way,” it states. “When young people start skipping school, they are telling their parents, school officials and the community at large that they are in trouble and need our help if they are to keep moving forward in life.”
Is the approach working?
Last year, 135 Newport-Mesa students were identified as chronically truant. So far this year, there are four such kids. While D’Agostino said it’s too early to label this a trend, he seems encouraged by the efforts so far.
After a student has three unexcused absences, parents receive a letter and phone call notifying them of the situation. Parents are contacted again if the problem continues, and at some point more intensive intervention kicks in, including possibly counseling, the signing of an attendance contract, the assignment of an “attendance buddy” or a mentor on campus, and progress monitoring. Home visits by social workers and school staff members might take place, and parental education classes might be required.
Chronically truant students and their parents are required to appear before a Student Attendance Review Board, a panel that would typically include the school principal and nurse, a police representative, a mental health worker, and a communications facilitator.
The most intractable cases might be referred to the local district attorney’s office, and such steps as putting a GPS device on a student, assigning a probation officer, and fining the parents can be considered by the juvenile court.
As drastic as those options sound, D’Agostino emphasized that the impetus on school administrators and other officials involved should be on engagement and problem-solving rather than punishment.
“We’re making parents know we’re a resource for support,” he said.
One factor that continues to hobble anti-truancy efforts, according to Harris, is that the true scope of the problem is likely masked by a lack of a statewide infrastructure for tracking attendance. To address the issue, this year the attorney general sponsored a package of four measures.
But in late September, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed two of the bills which would have required school and state officials to maintain and report truancy records. He opted only to sign the other two requiring the inclusion of district attorneys and public defenders on attendance review boards, and reports by prosecutors on the outcome of adjudicated truancy cases.
Harris lamented the vetoes as “missed opportunities to help keep California’s youngest and most vulnerable students on track. We must get serious about keeping track of whether young children are in school.”
She continues to make school attendance a top priority, most visibly in campaign ads for her reelection bid that link chronic truancy with crime. If she wins a second term, as expected, it’s safe to say we’ll be hearing more on the subject in the months ahead.
