District outlines strategies to curb chronic absenteeism after COVID‑era rise

District staff told the board on May 22 that chronic absenteeism rose during and after the pandemic and remains a concern at several elementary schools. The presentation reviewed subgroup trends, academic correlations and a multi‑pronged response plan.

Dr Wildy and Dr Geneves described how chronic absence (missing 10% or more of school days) correlates with lower GPA in secondary grades and explained the district’s staged response: site‑level Student Study Team (SST) interventions, a standardized notification calendar to ensure consistent parent outreach, and escalation to the Student Attendance Review Board (SARB) for persistent cases.

Why it matters: chronic absenteeism reduces learning time and has measurable academic effects; the district tied some attendance challenges directly to facility conditions (heat, outages) and to family practices such as vacation travel during school days.

Planned steps
Staff proposed increasing parent awareness of attendance impacts, rolling out school- or level‑specific attendance plans tied to LCAP goals, piloting an attendance‑management platform at a small number of high‑need schools to test automated, personalized messaging and dashboards, and celebrating improved attendance metrics in ways that avoid penalizing students with legitimate absences.

Board members asked for school‑level plans by fall and urged exploring attendance incentives that are sensitive to family hardship. Staff noted existing site work, recommended pilot testing platforms before districtwide purchase and said they would return with implementation plans and budget implications.