Empty seats are straining Long Beach Unified’s already-thin wallet. Now, amid staff cuts and cost-saving measures aimed at shrinking a large deficit, the school district is also trying to boost attendance, hoping to recoup state funds it’s left on the table in recent years.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, attendance hovered around 95% to 96%, the district said in a recent budget update, and one in eight students was chronically absent. During and immediately after the pandemic, LBUSD attendance plummeted and chronic absenteeism skyrocketed, reflecting a national trend.
Attendance has improved since then, but numbers never rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.
The district is adjusting to a new normal, where a quarter of students were chronically absent the last two years, according to the California Department of Education. As pressure mounts to increase attendance, educators say they’re being pushed not just to teach but to make sure students are attending class. District leaders, meanwhile, are advocating for changes in the state’s school funding formula, arguing the current system disadvantages large urban districts like Long Beach.
Chronically absent students, who miss at least 10% of instructional days, are a major drag on districtwide attendance, which sits at 93.4% this school year. That’s only a couple of percentage points lower than historic averages, but even seemingly small dips in attendance have big implications. With each percentage drop, the district loses $8 million annually in state funding, according to Superintendent Jill Baker.
Low attendance is compounded by decreasing enrollment (LBUSD has lost more than 16,000 students — and significant state funding — in the last decade). Now, the district is operating at a $70 million deficit and searching the couch cushions for change. Attendance is “the most positive and effective means of addressing the District’s financial situation,” Baker and Yumi Takahashi, the district’s chief business and financial officer, said in a recent memo addressed to members of the board of education.
The new “You Belong!” campaign “centers on the message that students belong in school every day” and includes competitions and rewards to incentivize attendance, as well as an interactive attendance tracker, a spokesperson for the district said. The messaging is intended for students and parents, she said, yet teachers said they’re urged to boost attendance, too.
“We’re hearing it at every staff meeting,” said a special education teacher who requested to remain anonymous for fear of blowback. She regularly sends notes home, emphasizing the importance of kids being present, but “it’s so frustrating” to be “tasked with” boosting attendance, she said, because “I have zero control over whether a kid comes to school on a given day.”
Some schools have begun offering incentives to students with high attendance. But the students winning awards are already present, the special education teacher said, while those who most need support, “the person who’s really, really struggling to get their kid here on time on a regular basis,” won’t even be in the running.
Repeatedly telling students to show up does not seem to be working, she said and floated the idea of an attendance policy “with more teeth.” Yet punitive truancy policies of the past may not be productive, she said: “The old teeth don’t really fit anymore.” Nor are they legal. A new state law, which took effect this month, removes jail time and fines for parents of truant students.
Susan Scott, a first-grade teacher at Fremont Elementary, described what she called a “monumental shift” after the pandemic: “The public’s mind is that it doesn’t matter if you’re at school every day,” she said.
Teachers are under enormous pressure to get kids in school, but that pressure is “in the wrong place,” said Scott. Teachers have little control over whether kids attend, Scott said, yet their pay and resources are affected as a result of tightening budgets. In California, schools receive a cost-of-living adjustment from the state, but the state withholds some money when attendance is below 100%. “The whole funding mechanism needs to be changed,” Scott said.
In December, the Public Policy Institute of California published a report examining potential updates to the state’s school funding formula. The report’s authors found that allocating funds by enrollment rather than attendance would benefit high-need districts.
That same month, superintendents of eight major urban California school districts (including Long Beach Unified) sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom urging him to increase funding to public education. The letter expressed concerns over decreasing enrollment, disruptions from immigration raids, federal funding cuts and economic hardship, which the superintendents said their districts are feeling acutely.
Yet the state’s nonpartisan policy advisor, the Legislative Analyst’s Office, recommended continuing to allocate funds based on attendance.
At the local level, improving attendance could recover state money the district “leaves on the table” due to low numbers, teachers union president Gerry Morrison said. In its recently ratified contract, the union created an attendance committee with the district, whose response to absences has been inadequate, Morrison said. He proposed collaborating with city agencies to encourage students to show up.