One out of every seven students in the Los Angeles Unified School District — more than 80,000 kids — missed more than three weeks of classes, according to a report from an attendance task force presented to the district’s school board Tuesday.
Missing that amount of school is enough to put a student’s education at risk: Students who are “chronically absent,” which many researchers define as missing at least 15 school days in a year, are more likely to drop out once they reach high school. Another 96,400 L.A. Unified students who missed between eight and 14 days of school last year are also at increased risk.
But beyond the educational impact, attendance is also a pocketbook issue for L.A. Unified: California funds public schools based on their daily attendance.
By missing its goal to decrease its chronic absenteeism rate, the task force concluded L.A. Unified lost out on around $20 million in revenues last year. And if every L.A. Unified student had attended one more day of school, the district would’ve received another $30 million last year, the task force found.
“Simply put: we can do better,” said task force co-chair Austin Beutner, a former investment banker, deputy mayor of L.A. and publisher of the Los Angeles Times. He’s currently president of the organization Vision to Learn.
“The district can do better. The community can do better,” he said. “Too many kids aren’t in school every day. Those kids aren’t learning and the district isn’t earning the revenues needed to support the entire classroom setting.”
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