As school starts, LAUSD faces chronic student absenteeism

For students and parents, the first day of school is a crush of new schedules, new teachers and new things to learn — along with a modicum of excitement. For the Los Angeles Unified School District, it’s about taking on renewed challenges

Supt. Alberto Carvalho, entering the third full school year of his administration, is confronting lagging student achievement, declining enrollment, school safety worries, absenteeism and budget constraints.

Carvalho has hailed the rise in state test scores at every grade level that took the math and English assessments, although students are struggling to reach pre-pandemic levels. Attendance is following a similar trendline — much better but still in need of improvement.

Meanwhile, officials are celebrating an opening day that features a growing fleet of electric buses, expanded healthcare and new food options that include an acai bowl.

For Jordan High senior Katherine Castro, the 2024 academic year embodies the familiar as well as the new — and portendsmemorable moments ahead.

“It’s like a fresh new start and I try to reflect on the year before and what I can do better,” said Katherine, who is looking forward to senior events — like a trip to Disneyland — and who intends to join the first college-going generation of her family. “It feels nice to go back to school, especially since this is my last year.”

Getting to school

In the return to campuses after pandemic closures, the number of students taking one of the district’s 1,300 buses to school dropped to about 10,000 from about 19,400. It’s since been rising — to 16,000 at the end of last year, with a goal of 35,000 for this year, about 8% of the district’s approximately 420,000 students.

Over the years, budget cutting limited daily bus service almost exclusively to students in magnet programs — meant to promote integration — and for students with disabilities. Yet there are about 25,000 empty seats on existing routes as school opens and officials have decided to try to fill them as a new service to families.

The district is advertising “transportation for all.” But what that has meant is that parents can contact the transportation division to request an available seat if a bus stops where that student needs to go. This year the transportation division also has tried to add stops based purely on demand.

“It’s about how to be more efficient with the resources we have,” said transportation director Daniel Kang. “So we’ve brought in several routing experts, consultants, to provide their solutions and using our routing software as well.”

Some 59 operating buses are electric — with 250 expected to be in service by the end of year. They cost twice as much — about $350,000 apiece — and require the construction of charging centers, but are expected to save money over time in fuel costs, while also reducing pollution.

The district also has about 20 routes designed to help students with safety issues getting to school — such as crossing gang turf, homeless encampments or dangerous roadways. These routes change based on real-time situations, but it’s another option for parents to inquire about.

It could help, too, that parents can get updates on the current location of their school bus by going online, Kang said.

Families can coordinate transportation needs through the district’s online “parent portal.”

There’s definitely room for improvement in the view of L.A. parents who took part in a recent survey commissioned by HopSkipDrive, a tech-based transportation vendor.

About 40% of parents who drive their children to and from school say these obligations have caused them to miss work, with a similar number saying the task has interfered with their ability to seek out or accept new job opportunities. And 44% of those who drive to and from school said that
“navigating and waiting in the pick-up or drop-off lane is one of the most stressful parts of their day.”

Keeping students in school

Chronic absenteeism — defined as missing at least 10% of the school year — soared when pandemic-shuttered campuses reopened in spring 2021. Just over 45% of students were chronically absent in 2021-22. The percentage dropped to 36.5% the following year, in 2022-23, the most recent year for which data have been posted. These numbers far exceed pre-pandemic levels, which already were considered high.

In response, the district accelerated an outreach campaign that includes home visits. AI-enhanced software that was supposed to provide reminders and suggest resources has been shelved after the company that created it cratered financially.

Another strategy offers students and families support through wellness clinics such as the one that just opened adjacent to Jordan High in Watts. It will serve students as well as an estimated 1,000 nearby community members who can walk in or make appointments.

The needs are especially acute at Jordan. Compared with elsewhere in the school system, families in that area have the highest rates of asthma, the largest number of emergency-room visits for assaults, the greatest eligibility for Medi-Cal services and the most pressing need for dental care, said Ron Tanimura, the district’s director of student medical services and Medi-Cal programs.

Katherine, the Jordan High student, said that the clinic provides help and privacy for students, whether for contraceptive services or required physicals for sports.

“There’s going to be more athletes this year,” said Katherine, who plans to study forensics in college. In the past, some girls who wanted to be on the soccer team “didn’t do their physical, so they weren’t a part of it, because they didn’t have a clinic to go to.”

She also appreciates the mental health component. Although Jordan has one or two counselors available, “I just feel like that’s not enough, because they’re always busy.

“Having the wellness clinic is like you have another place to go to that’s not necessarily inside the school, because maybe you’re insecure about other students seeing you.”

School safety

Officials view a pending cellphone ban as a major safety upgrade — mobile devices have been used to organize fights and drug sales on or near campuses. They hope to reverse a significant rise in fights and drugs on campus.

The district has tried to make campuses safer from outside threats by limiting entry and installing surveillance cameras. Threats inside a campus — such as bullying and vaping — are supposed to be managed through greater counseling resources and restorative justice, through which students who treat others badly or break rules are supposed to take responsibility for their actions and attempt to make amends.

The role of school police remains a topic of intense debate. Since mid-2020, officers have been limited to off-campus patrols, entering only to make arrests, conduct investigations or respond to an emergency situation.

One faction of students and parents wants to entirely eliminate the school police department, saying their presence traumatizes students and makes them feel unsafe.

Countering them are pro-police parents who, by the end of the last school year, had collected about 5,000 signatures on a petition calling for school police to be returned to campus.

“We’re here as parents fighting for more security and safety in the schools,” said Diana Guillen, a leader within the district’s parent-advisory committees at a school board meeting this month.

“All these programs that you’re doing truly don’t have an impact,” Guillen said. “I think if you want to take school police away, it has to be once the programs are already functioning — not when you’re experimenting with them. Because you’re playing with our kids lives.”

Meeting basic needs: food

School food has a poor reputation and L.A. Unified richly deserved it for years — combining poor nutrition with sketchy taste. It did not help that, for a time, the district built new schools without working kitchens, relying instead on trucked-in entrees assembled in a central kitchen and then reheated at the school.

But a succession of efforts has improved the menu. This year’s annual taste-testing of new offerings took place at the new kitchen at Belvedere Middle School in East L.A.

Students sampled and rated an acai bowl with fresh fruit and a cheesy jalapeno biscuit with hot honey chicken. A nod to cultural diversity appeared in the birria bowl and arroz con pollo. And vegans could try chickpea masala or a fresh bar with fruit, vegetables and hummus.

All produce is sourced within 200 miles, central kitchen supervisor Javier Gutierrez said proudly.

A $65,000 “combi” oven allowed cafeteria staff to follow a two-step process for making fresh cinnamon rolls — one temperature for the dough to rise and a different setting for the cooking, explained culinary supervisor Jamie Ginsburg.

Salik Mian, a junior at Chatsworth High — and a self-described picky eater who used to eat only white rice at Chinese restaurants, savored his first bite: “I love that actually.”

In the classroom

Students will arrive with varying degrees of summer enrichment or summer slide — an issue the district tried to address with summer school, which reached more than 100,000 students.

About 60 students from migrant families, enrolled for the summer at Malabar Street Elementary School, were part of a federally funded program created with the L.A. Zoo. The students were bused to the zoo to learn about conservation work focused on species including the California condor and the southern mountain yellow-legged frog.

In their classwork at Malabar, students focused on improving basic skills in reading and math — which educators hope will pay off Monday.

Major shift coming: Cellphone ban

This school year will mark a radical realignment of students’ minute-by-minute life when a school-day student cellphone takes effect in January.

The details are going to be worked out in the fall. One option under discussion is requiring students to place phones in sealed pouches that can be opened only by a magnetic device students can access only as they exit campus.