Superintendent urges absent kids to come back
Carvalho knocks on doors after 30% of the district's students didn't attend in 2021
Half the students in the Los Angeles Unified School District were chronically absent last year, including ones who missed multiple days of school due to virus quarantines, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said.
But even without counting those absences largely stemming from quarantines, close to 30% of students were considered chronically absent, meaning they missed 10% or more of school days, he said.
“I cannot teach the absent child,” Carvalho said, addressing the media before visiting a handful of homes Friday to meet with and hear directly from chronically absent students to learn what challenges prevented them from attending school regularly.
Carvalho was not alone in the act. LAUSD employees and members of the school board spent the day calling or knocking on the doors of families across the district whose children previously had poor attendance in hopes of boosting their attendance this coming school year.
The effort is part of the new “iAttend LAUSD” campaign, though the practice of knocking on doors to engage with students and their families is not new. The practice dates back more than a decade, and previous iterations were called Attendance Matters Day and, before that, Student Recovery Day.
Soon, annual state assessment scores will be released that will show significant losses in reading and math performances among students, Carvalho said.
“We're not going to leave any one of these children behind,” he said. “It is our moral cause, it is our professional responsibility, it is our duty to ensure that we connect with every one of them and provide them with the high quality education they need and they deserve. No excuses.”
In addition to the hundreds of thousands of chronically absent students, Carvalho believes there are 10,000 to 20,000 school-aged children in the L.A. area who have not registered to attend school. Many are among the youngest learners who never enrolled in the district, as well as children who moved to the area as teenagers and went straight into the workforce.
The district intends to strengthen partnerships with
community organizations to find and bring these children back into the school system, the superintendent said.
In the meantime, on Friday, he visited the homes of five chronically absent students.
At the last stop, he met Cloud Mejia, a 13-year-old student who often skipped classes last year due to bullying. Cloud, who will start eighth grade on Monday, also didn't care for a uniform students were required to wear at school, feeling it stifled self-expression.
At the end of the conversation, Carvalho gave both Cloud and Cloud's mother a hug.
Afterwards, Carvalho said the home visits confirmed his suspicion that many children became disconnected from school because of the pandemic and that there are children in the city whom the district is not aware of. On three occasions, the superintendent said, he or his administration found out about other children in the household or in a neighboring residence who aren't enrolled in school during the home visits.
“What we hope to do in a very honest way is meet kids where they are, address their issues, … really listen to their voice and acknowledge it,” Carvalho said.
As for Cloud? Trusting adults hasn't come easy for the teenager, but having the superintendent and others visit made a difference.
“Now that I've spoken to the superintendent, I'm hoping that some changes are going to be made,” Cloud said.