The Los Angeles Unified School District school board passed a resolution to support parent employees.
The district will gather data to help understand employees’ needs and what it will take to fulfill them.
This resolution is just the beginning — and a more detailed plan is expected in November.
The Los Angeles Unified School District’s school board unanimously approved at Tuesday’s meeting a resolution to support employees who are parents.
Currently, many LAUSD employees fail to qualify for California’s state-paid family leave, according to the resolution. During public comments at Tuesday’s meeting, several teachers and community members said they did not feel adequately supported by Los Angeles Unified when they had children.
“I’ve met countless educators, school staff members, who have had challenges with the whole parental package, with healthcare, with child care, with parental leave. And so this really, this resolution, really bore out of those stories and the opportunities to change L.A. Unified to be that employer of choice for parents,” said Ortiz Franklin, who introduced the resolution, alongside board members Karla Griego and Kelly Gonez.
“We have a big vision in this district for our kids to achieve at really high levels. And, we know that our staff needs to be well to be able to do that — and this is going to support them in their journey, to support our kids.”
The resolution — “Parental Package: LAUSD as an Equitable Employer of Choice for Thriving Families” — addresses various stages of parenthood, including family planning, pregnancy and parental leave and childcare.
It also aims to boost employee retention in a female-dominated field and make LAUSD a model for other districts across the nation.
Tuesday’s resolution is just the beginning of a longer process.
It calls for data collection on various factors, including employee demographics, the amount of time employees take off, the number of employees who have children enrolled in Los Angeles Unified’s early education programs, healthcare plan coverage and any financial impacts of providing over 12 weeks of family leave.
The district will also conduct a study to gauge employees’ interest in having children, family planning needs, access to LAUSD’s provided reproductive support, healthcare benefits, obstacles employees encounter in taking time off, information about childcare and the nature of employees’ current children’s education.
Based on their findings, the Los Angeles Unified School District will have to come up with a plan by November. And in the meantime, the district will be expected to work toward providing adequate lactation spaces, identify liaisons to support parent employees and find affordable childcare providers to consult on an as-needed basis.
“After the birth of my first daughter, I returned to the classroom happily, excited. I nursed my baby and during my unpaid lunch break, that was fine, until it wasn’t,” said Tanya Reyes, a veteran teacher with LAUSD, who created a support group within United Teachers Los Angeles, the district’s teacher’s union, to support other working moms. “After the disagreement with my administrator, I was told my daughter was a liability. My pay was docked. Not once. Not twice — but three times.”
“Mothers need paid leave — not sick time, not borrowed time. Paid leave,” Reyes added during public comment at Tuesday’s board meeting. “Families need policies that protect us, and those policies must be enforced.”
The start of the school year can be anxiety-producing. We get the anxiety. Believe us, we do. Between the three of us, we parent a kindergartner, a ninth grader and a freshman in college. We know how scary it is to feel like your child is falling behind in a game with life-shaping stakes. But, as this new school year gets started, we’re trying to worry less about our own kids and put our energy into a broader, collective educational enterprise.
To understand what that collective enterprise might look like, it helps to step back and think about the goals that motivate public education. Contemporary schools serve at least three crucial social goals: helping individuals flourish, sorting students into roles in our highly differentiated economy, and creating a broader sense of solidarity.
As we settle into our fall routines, we often focus on the first two goals at the expense of the third. Because we know that education shapes our children’s life chances, we want our kids to get into the advanced math class, make the honor roll, and claim the high-status educational positions that clear the way to high-status positions in the broader world. We start to see the whole educational system as a vast tournament, where students compete for access to learning opportunities that provide access to more advanced learning opportunities that, ultimately, open the way to elite positions in the adult world.
No wonder we’re all so stressed out. We’ve turned education into a zero-sum game and invested that game with high stakes. We once talked about education as a pathway to the middle class. But today, as educational debt loads rise and machine intelligences fuel job insecurity, that pathway feels like a tightrope without a net. And that’s just part of the story. In a meritocratic culture that sees educational success as a marker of worth, we feel like our children need to excel in order to prove they matter.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
In fact, America’s new favorite social studies teacher and high school football coach shows us how different schools can be. As a long-serving public school teacher, Tim Walz recognized the way sports can bring a community together and how school leaders can channel that community toward inclusion and belonging for all students. In the classroom, he developed learning experiences that challenged students to understand the recurring sources of conflict and genocide, helping them see connections between communities across the globe. As a politician, he resisted school choice policies that allow families to wall themselves off from one another and championed a vision of schools as places where everyone — regardless of their family income — can come together around a meal.
You don’t have to be a teacher, coach or policymaker to advance this vision.
Parents, you can choose to send your child to the most diverse public school available to them; leave the packed lunch at home and encourage your child to eat in the cafeteria; praise your child for encouraging a peer who is struggling to fit in; organize parents from throughout your school’s community to get involved; and advocate for policies that provide public schools with the resources they need to ensure that all kids thrive; and vote for leaders who will make those policies a reality.
This fall, as we post back-to-school photos to social media, we’d do well to remember — and celebrate — that school is the place where we learn how to play well with others. This key lesson in social solidarity requires a curriculum far more complicated than Calculus and more nuanced than AP Literature. School teaches us to see ourselves as individuals embedded in a complex set of relationships with others. It teaches us to respect those around us, to observe them with care and empathy in order to identify, and adjust to the intricacies of any given interaction.
Taking these lessons seriously opens us — and our children — up to a deep humility and a profound sense of responsibility. When we are aware of our connections to others, we can’t help but remember that each of the people we run into has an inner life every bit as rich as our own. That we are just one of 8 billion other humans — and countless other organisms — on this planet, each of which shares the same will to survive.
This sense of solidarity is a badly needed antidote to the preening and divisive rhetoric that will dominate the news this election season. Solidarity allows us to step back and gain some perspective on our grievances, reminding us to consider our own wants in light of the wants and needs of others.
If we don’t want the divisiveness that defines our politics to define our society, we need to work together to turn away from educational competition and build schools that create solidarity.
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Emily K. Penner, Ph.D., is associate professor of education in the school of education at the University of California, Irvine.Her research focuses on K-12 education policy and considers the ways that districts, schools, teachers and families contribute to and ameliorate educational inequality.
Thurston Domina is associate dean for academic affairs and director of graduate studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Education.
Andrew Penner is a professor in the sociology department at the University of California, Irvine and director of the Center for Administrative Data Analysis.
The opinions in this commentary are those of the authors. We welcome guest commentaries with diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Project 2025’s section on education proposes that the U.S. Department of Education’s largest funding streams for K-12 schools be turned into block grants to the states with minimal oversight. The two big programs are Title 1 for poor kids and the funding for students with disabilities (IDEA).
The states would be free to convert these funds into vouchers, instead of spending them on low-income students or students with disabilities.
The National Education Association explains here:
Block Grant Overview
Typically, the deal between the federal government and states when specific program funds are block-granted is that the federal government will provide less funding in return for less regulation and requirements. With less regulation, the assumption is that states should be able to do as much or more with less money. While it may be appealing initially to those who administer federal grants at the state and local level, in reality, fewer dollars mean fewer programs and services. States and school districts may have more flexibility in using federal funds but it comes at the expense of the students the federal grant program was designed to help in the first place.
Many states already underfund their commitment to public education. If states and districts don’t cover the shortfall, students receiving Title I and IDEA services will suffer. Furthermore, both Title I and IDEA have maintenance of effort and supplement, not supplant requirements to ensure states and districts hold up their levels of spending when receiving federal funds. Those requirements will fall away, too, and, most likely, so will the funding commitments by states and districts.
Title I of the ESEA and IDEA were created to ensure all students have equal access to an education, regardless of family income or disability. Many states were failing to adequately educate students in these populations, if at all. The federal role here was clear: where a student lived or their circumstances should not determine the quality of their education. ESEA and IDEA enshrined this principle and attached specific conditions and requirements that states must follow, in return for federal financial assistance, to ensure that students from lower-income families and communities and those with disabilities have the same opportunity to learn as any other student. “No-strings-attached” block grant funding turns the clock back 60 years on education policy and progress, and turns its back on our nation’s commitment to educating all students. While one would like to think that we can trust states to do the right thing on behalf of all students, history tells us differently.
Providing states with federal aid and fewer requirements leaves the door open for states to do as they wish. Title I of ESEA and IDEA include important requirements and protections for students and families precisely because they were lacking previously. At its core, the Department of Education is a civil rights agency, providing dollars, regulations, requirements, guidance, technical assistance, research, monitoring, and compliance enforcement to preserve and protect students’ access to a free and appropriate education. Strip it away, and you strip away the rights of certain students to a meaningful education.
Every year, by May 15, the governor has to revise his proposed budget, and this is when the budget season really kicks off.
So, just as individuals are concerned about personal finances, retirements, the impacts of inflation, and uncertainty about government services, the state is facing those same sorts of uncertainties. And in this case, uncertainty really rolls downhill. There’s national uncertainty, which is causing state revenue uncertainty and budget uncertainty, which then impacts the state’s education budget decisions, that will then impact what school districts are facing as they head into adopting their budgets by the end of June.
So, we know that the revenue outlook for the current year that ends June 30 looks pretty good, so will that protect us?
I’d sort of hoped that they would, but the short answer is no, and that’s because of some nuances in how Prop 98 works. A lot of those extra revenues that have come in are actually going to count against last year, the 2023–24 fiscal year. And in that year, the Legislature actually suspended the constitutional guarantee for a year. So even though there are extra revenues, none of those revenues will go to schools.
As we look to the future, to the 2025–26 school year, the forecasts are looking much more pessimistic. The Legislative Analyst’s Office just came out with a projection of revenues for next year being down around $8 billion. That would trickle down to schools getting about $3.5 billion less compared to what their current programs receive.
I would expect schools to get the program that’s in place for the current year, plus a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), which is currently expected to be about 2.3%. That probably seems pretty low to most folks, especially given some of the costs districts might face—salary increases that have already happened due to inflation, the rising costs teachers are facing, plus pensions and other obligations. So, the costs districts are facing may be going up more than the 2.3% COLA they’re getting.
Your tax dollars could soon lift a rainbow of religious educators — from Christian academies to pro-Palestinian classrooms — as the U.S. Supreme Court teeters on forcing states to aid sectarian schools.
In oral arguments last month, the high court’s conservatives voiced eagerness to reverse an Oklahoma ruling that blocked public funding for a virtual charter school infused with Catholic teachings, an online scheme designed by the Tulsa diocese.
Oklahoma’s far-from-woke Supreme Court agreed with the state attorney general in Drummond v. Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board that taxpayer funding for religious web-based classes would violate America’s sacred separation of church and state. This key element of our Constitution insulates all faiths from state intrusion, while vesting shared civic duties, like education, within a tolerant and secular government.
But muddled logic ruled this day in the high court among jurists like Samuel Alito, a self-described “practical originalist,” long insisting that judges must abide by the Constitution’s original intent. Alito at one point attacked Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, claiming that he “reeks of hostility towards Islam.”
This odd allegation stemmed from Drummond’s point that “while many Oklahomans undoubtedly support charter schools sponsored by various Christian faiths, the precedent … will compel approval of similar applications by all faiths.” Alito mangled the argument, alleging that Drummond is “motivated by hostility toward particular religions.”
Alito dodged the bedrock question of whether taxpayer support of religion is permitted by the nation’s founding covenants. Instead, his tortured reasoning claimed that public programs cannot “discriminate” against religious schools.
California hosts more charter schools than any other state. In districts like Los Angeles Unified, one-fifth of all students attend a charter school, which did help lift student achievement for two decades before the pandemic. Still, Alito is not alone in negotiating the shifting ideologies and ironic surprises that mark the charter school movement.
These publicly funded but independently run campuses were first authorized by Minnesota’s Legislature in 1991, founded on the rather Christian yearning for fairness, allowing poor families to escape mediocre public schools and shop for effective teachers. California’s charter law, approved one year later, emphasized how these small hot-houses of innovation would hurry reform of regular public schools.
But few advocates foresaw how the rapid spread of charters would drive religious schools into the ground. Why pay even modest tuition for parochial school when a free charter has opened nearby? Enrollment in Catholic schools has fallen by one-third nationwide since the advent of charter schools; more than one thousand campuses have closed. Small Christian schools have taken a hit as well, with nearly one hundred shuttered in Los Angeles alone.
So, the pushback by religious educators is understandable, with some (not all) sects eager to tap into public funding. If the Supreme Court now rules that states must subsidize faith-filled charter schools, Alito could realize his apparent wish for more Catholic or Confucian schools.
But do spiritual leaders desire a messy entanglement with government? States typically require local school boards, when chartering independent educators, to ensure safe buildings, enforce shared curricular goals, and demonstrate that schools elevate student learning. Conservative jurists may well invite the state to squash evangelical charters that exclude Jewish kids, or protect the errant Presbyterian pupil who refuses to chant from the Quran.
The high court has already permitted limited public financing of religious schools. This includes taxpayer-financed vouchers in select states that help parents pay tuition for sectarian schools, along with tax credits that mostly benefit affluent families enrolling children in private schools. (Los Angeles Unified recently settled with the Catholic archdiocese, reimbursing the church $3 million to cover Title I services required by related court decisions.)
But these earlier rulings “involved fairly discrete state involvement,” Chief Justice John Roberts said during oral arguments, while warning that Oklahoma’s potential oversight of religious schools “does strike me as much more comprehensive involvement.” His vote will likely decide whether public dollars flow to religious schools.
Perhaps it’s reassuring that right-wing judges like Alito remain so protective of religious liberty, sniffing out unlikely opponents of Islam or the Vatican. But telling states and taxpayers we must subsidize sectarian schools, then inviting government inside churches, synagogues and mosques, will only fracture the once common cause of public schools.
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Bruce Fuller is an emeritus professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley and author of “When Schools Work.”
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
As many readers probably know, we have written and published a middle school reading curriculum built around the science of reading.
And now we’re writing a high school curriculum as well!
We think this is a hugely important project. There’s very little high-quality curriculum out there for high school English teachers that supports them with knowledge-rich and adaptable lessons to ensure deep study of important books.
Having been working on this project for a year or so, we’re excited to share some of the work we’ve done.
Let us start by telling you about two foundations of the high school curriculum—both of which will be familiar to those who know our middle school work.
First, our HS curriculum is book based. Statistics show that the amount of time kids spend reading at home doesn’t amount to the time they should be reading to develop and maintain their reading comprehension, according to research. To address this, we seek to build students’ love of books by centering units on full texts, not excerpts or selections, so students have time to engage deeply with the protagonist’s plight and with an author’s writing style. Additionally, we build students’ fluency by ensuring that class time (even in high school!) includes shared reading, so students read aloud and hear text pages come to life.
Second, the curriculum is knowledge-driven. As research shows, reading comprehension is directly tied to knowledge, so knowledge is infused throughout the unit where it most supports comprehension. Thinking well requires facts, and nonfiction readings and explicitly-taught vocabulary words help students unlock the deeper meanings in the anchor text. As in our middle school curriculum, dedicated retrieval practice helps students encode vocabulary, text details, and unit knowledge to strengthen their analysis of the text.
emphasis on books and knowledge is crucial for students across all grades, we recognize that there are some specific needs of high school students as they develop maturity and independence. And so a few aspects of our high school curriculum are new and different.
One hallmark of maturity is the ability to grapple with “big ideas,” those questions and issues that have reverberated through time, so in addition to daily discussion questions, the high school curriculum also includes opportunities for more extended and student-driven discussions. We’ve designed specific lesson plan formats that help teachers confidently run extended Discussion Seminars over the course of the unit, and developed and included supporting documents for teachers and students that outline the purpose and some best practices for leading and participating in discussions.
All that rich thinking and learning from discussion needs to be captured–so our curriculum supports teachers and students in intentional note taking, using the Cornell notes method. Lesson plans include spaces throughout the lesson where students can pause to recap class discussion or reflect on their learning in ways that intentionally support note taking and using notes more effectively.
Our first unit, John Steinbeck’s Mice and Men, is ready for purchase, and we’ll keep you informed as additional units are planned. In the meantime email us at ReadingCurriculum@teachlikeachampion.org if you’d like to know more or see a sample.
Singing the ABC song. Learning the days of the week from a nursery rhyme. Making a finger-painted collage of little handprints.
Arts education has always been center stage in early education because little children are naturally creative, filled with wonder and the burning desire to express themselves. Arts and crafts not only help nurture a child’s natural imagination, they also boost small motor skills, sharpen hand-eye coordination and feed the insatiable need to play.
“Children don’t just play, they learn fundamental skills through play,” said Daniel Mendoza, a Placer County-based visual artist and specialist in early childhood education art practices. “Children are in a creative mindset all the time.”
While this may well be as true for teenagers as it is for toddlers, there is far more time and space allotted for playfulness in the early grades, when the crucial role of play in particular and creativity in general has long been a matter of common sense.
“Really, I’m just a common-sense professor, and somehow it became rogue,” said Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University and an expert in the key role of play in learning. “What if we taught children the way we know the brain learns?”
Bringing joy back into the classroom is also what motivates Cindy Hoisington, an early childhood expert who specializes in reaching out to children from historically marginalized communities at the Education Development Center (EDC), a national education nonprofit.
“This is not anything new, knowing that play is so critical to children, whether it’s dramatic play, building play, creative arts play or physical play,” said Hoisington, a STEM expert who taught preschool for decades. “But as soon as they hit kindergarten and first grade, there’s this dichotomy that sets in. Play is something you get to do after you do the learning when, in fact, we know that play is an incredible vehicle for learning.”
Play, some experts suggest, may be the superpower of the young. A growing body of research suggests that play may even be a way to help close achievement gaps. One report, analyzing 26 studies from 18 countries, found that in communities from Rwanda to Ethiopia, children got higher learning boosts in literacy, motor skills and social-emotional development when attending child care centers that use a mix of instruction and free play as opposed to those focused solely on academics.
“Children are so naturally, intuitively ready with their curiosity, their motivation to explore the world and everything in it, to the point where that’s why the twos are so terrible, because you’re constantly chasing after them,” said Hoisington, who helps evaluate digital media for PBS. “Science, for instance, tends to have a bad rap as this dry body of knowledge that we have to learn, but really it’s a process of exploration that is very much integral with play.”
Tapping into that spirit of discovery with hands-on experiences is often best, experts say. Curiosity burns brightest in the early years, so letting kids loose to investigate the world is part of building a rich, play-based learning environment.
“Where young children are free to investigate by observing, touching and acting on the objects in their world,” said Deborah Stipek, an expert in early childhood at Stanford University. “This is how they learn about the world — for example, that some objects float and some sink. Through their own experimentation and observation, they may even arrive at hypotheses about the qualities that differentiate the two.”
From “The Wheels on the Bus” to “Baby Shark,” kiddos love to sing and love to learn, so why not teach through music? Singing the “Old MacDonald had a Farm” song can be educational, experts say, as well as a ritual for community building. Children can take turns deciding on which animal to pick, which builds vocabulary as well as sharing skills.
“Young children learn best by doing,” said Stipek. “Counting objects is better than counting dots on a worksheet because they can move the objects to help them keep track of how many they have counted. Worksheets are not all bad. They can provide opportunities to practice and consolidate skills. But children don’t develop new skills doing worksheets, and they are typically not nearly as engaging and fun.”
Tracing the alphabet in shaving cream or making tin-foil sculptures may seem like basic exercises, but they often teach sophisticated concepts. Playing make-believe games can teach numerous skills at once. Pretend restaurants need someone to write a menu, calculate a bill and greet diners, fostering literacy, numeracy and special-emotional learning all in one game, Hoisington notes.
Songs are a clever way to remember stuff because they make memorization easy and fun for little ones. Melodies and rhymes make the most of our limited working memory to help children embed basic facts into their long-term memory, bolstering depth of cognition.
“I still sing the ABC song in my head sometimes, if I want to know which letter comes before which letter,” admits Hoisington.
What’s often missed in the discussion of the role of play is that older children also need time for creativity and free play, as well as the arts. While there is much talk about the need to engage students, there is little focus on low-hanging fruit like increasing time for arts, sports and recess. Putting too much emphasis on academic skills in isolation undercuts the love of learning, some warn.
“Kids try to buck it, but certainly by first grade we’ve started to ruin them,” said Hirsh-Pasek. “We pound the curiosity right out of kids.”
Mendoza firmly believes teachers should be guides to adventure instead of taskmasters.
“You don’t have to be a dictator,” as he puts it, “you can be a Sherpa.”
So, why doesn’t the role of play get more respect in education? Why do we emphasize test scores over deep learning?
“We got to this place because people are scared,” said Hirsh-Pasek. “They’re feeling like they’re losing control, and they want to make sure their kid is ahead. We push it younger and younger and younger, and as we do that, we’re creating a situation where our kids are anxious wrecks and the parents are anxious wrecks.”
Some experts suggest that children need more time for play and creativity in the wake of the pandemic, not less. Credit: Lillian Mongeau / EdSource
Too few teachers and parents are aware that play helps build the architecture of the growing brain, experts say.
“Play is not frivolous; it enhances brain structure and function and promotes executive function (i.e., the process of learning, rather than the content), which allow us to pursue goals and ignore distractions,” as an American Academy of Pediatrics report put it. “When play and safe, stable, nurturing relationships are missing in a child’s life, toxic stress can disrupt the development of executive function and the learning of prosocial behavior; in the presence of childhood adversity, play becomes even more important.”
Some experts fear that the laser focus on falling test scores in recent years has led to a decrease in playful learning. They suggest that children need more time for play in the wake of the pandemic, not less. Amid the crisis of chronic absenteeism, engaging students on a compelling level may be more vital than ever.
Creativity is the secret formula, experts say, in a world where machines will always compute faster than humans. Drill and kill won’t help children master high-level intellectual inquiry and conceptual analysis.
“You have to ask yourself, what’s it going to take to outsmart the robots?” as Hirsh-Pasek put it. “We need kids who don’t just memorize and take tests well, which AI will do better than our kids ever will. We need kids to be explorers and problem solvers.”
This is a website that will keep you informed about the ongoing struggle to preserve our democracy.
It’s called Democracy Docket, and it is led by lawyer Marc Elias. Marc is a fearless defender of the rights of all citizens. He reports on threats to democracy and victories for democracy.
The Trump administration introduced a new budget proposal calling for a near $500 million cut to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the nation’s top federal entity responsible for protecting elections from hacking.
The Trump administration is looking into suspending people’s right to challenge their incarceration in court, to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts, White House aide Stephen Miller said today.
Though Miller described it as a “privilege,” the writ of habeas corpus is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitutionand can only be suspended “when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
A second lawsuit was filed in the Wisconsin Supreme Court challenging the state’s congressional map. Voters, represented by the Campaign Legal Center, argue the map unevenly distributes the population, violating the state constitution.
The Iowa Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision that allowed voting materials to be translated into other languages, despite a state law requiring documents to be distributed in English only. The case was dismissed due to lack of standing.
A pro-voting group is challenging Wyoming’s House Bill 156, which mandates documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. The lawsuit alleges the measure violates the First, Fifth, and 14th Amendments by creating barriers for eligible voters.
The group argues the law disproportionately affects women, Hispanic, young, and low-income residents. This comes amid already low civic participation in Wyoming, where only 65% of eligible voters registered and 60% voted in 2024.
Trump wants us to believe he is all-powerful. He wants us to believe that opposing him is futile or worse. He wants you to accept that there’s nothing you can do to limit his ability to harm our country and our democracy. But that simply isn’t true.
Marc shares 10 things you can do to stand up to Trump and protect our democracy.
A silent crisis is unfolding in our schools and impacting millions of California students: chronic absenteeism. The consequences of unchecked absenteeism are severe and far-reaching.
It starts innocuously with a few missed days, but can quickly spiral, decimating a child’s future prospects. When dropout rates increase and college readiness declines, the ripple effects harm entire communities.
Traditionally, students and their families are penalized for missing school, but this hasn’t resolved the issue and instead, targets marginalized student groups. As an educator with years of experience in the classroom and administration, I propose a radical shift in our approach — treating chronic absenteeism as a public health emergency.
The rise in social isolation, health concerns and economic hardships have dramatically increased the number of students consistently missing school nationwide. In California, we are seeing consistent, distressing high chronic absence rates, particularly among high school studeents and historically marginalized populations.
We can’t simply discipline our way out of this crisis. Instead, we need a comprehensive strategy that addresses the complex roots of absenteeism, from persistent health issues to limited transportation access, from heightened stress to trauma.
Imagine if schools treated chronic absenteeism with the same urgency and collaboration used during the Covid-19 pandemic. We mobilized resources to fight a global crisis, and we can apply that same level of commitment to ensuring every child attends school regularly.
By framing chronic absenteeism as a public health crisis, we open the door to more effective interventions. One crucial strategy for dealing with public health emergencies is risk communication, which helps convey urgency, provide accurate information, and mobilize stakeholders to take collaborative action. The impact of proactive attendance management has shown to improve attendance rates threefold for chronically absent students.
Here are strategies schools can implement, drawing from public health approaches:
Convey urgency: Research shows attendance is the most crucial predictor of school success. Schools must create a “relentless drumbeat” about the importance of attendance through daily text messages, visual aids, public recognition and personalized follow-ups with absent students.
Provide accurate information: Transparency is key. Schools should share clear data on absenteeism and its effects. Implementing user-friendly attendance management systems can automate positive intervention letters and free up staff for more personalized outreach. Training teachers to analyze attendance data enables early, tailored interventions.
Mobilize stakeholders: Thirty-seven percent of K-12 families want actionable steps to improve their children’s attendance. Schools must provide specific, consistent messaging about attendance importance to all stakeholders — students, families, educators, board members and policymakers. Offer concrete ways for everyone to contribute to the solution.
Advocate for prevention: Positive messaging encourages attendance; punitive actions deter it. A multilevel approach works best:
District level: Superintendents should regularly communicate about the importance of attendance.
Building level: Principals should celebrate good attendance and offer incentives.
Classroom level: Teachers should reach out personally to families, highlighting successes and addressing issues promptly.
Foster two-Way, equitable communication: A Harvard study found that students with the best outcomes for remote learning during the pandemic were in communities with high levels of trust. Schools must establish open dialogues with families in their preferred languages and communication channels. This approach helps identify root causes of absenteeism and builds the trust essential for consistent attendance.
The responsibility for addressing chronic absenteeism extends beyond individual schools or districts — it requires a unified national effort. However, we needn’t wait for a grand solution. By prioritizing consistent, positive communication in our classrooms, schools and communities, we can make significant strides in reducing absenteeism.
Treating chronic absenteeism as a public health emergency isn’t just a metaphor — it’s a call to action. It demands we recognize the severity of the issue and respond with the urgency, coordination and comprehensive strategies that have proven effective in addressing other public health crises.
By reframing our approach, we can foster healthier educational environments and brighter futures for our students, one attendance record at a time.
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Kara Stern, Ph.D., is the director of education and engagement at SchoolStatus, a provider of K-12 data-driven communication, attendance and professional development solutions.
The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. We welcome guest commentaries with diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
For 30 years, California has experimented with a school choice program that let parents enroll their children in nearby districts that opened up seats for outsiders.Now the little-known District of Choice program, which the Legislature has renewed seven times, will become permanent through the passage of Senate Bill 897, authored by Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, if the governor signs the bill.
Only about 10,000 — about 0.2% — of the state’s students annually have taken advantage of the program. Most attend a half-dozen, primarily small districts in Southern California.
Districts of choice must be open to all who apply, including students with disabilities, who may be more expensive to serve. To prevent wealthier, primarily white families from exiting their home districts, SB 897 adds some stipulations to existing restrictions to prevent racial disparities and financial impacts. After accommodating siblings of transferees, the next priorities will be foster, homeless and low-income children. Up to 1% of students in districts with more than 50,000 students and a maximum 10% of students in districts with fewer than 50,000 will be able to transfer annually. Districts with a negative or qualified financial status can limit the number of students who can leave under the program.
Walnut Valley Unified, a 14,000-student district in the San Gabriel Valley, has been the most active proponent, with 2,774 students –30% of the total –transferring there in 2023-24, likely drawn to its Chinese immersion schools and emphasis on the arts. Pomona Unified, in opposing the bill, argued it lost wealthier families in Diamond Bar, which borders both districts, to the program.
The California Department of Education has not promoted the program, and many neighboring districts appear to have taken a don’t-poach-on-me, I-won’t-tread-on-you approach to interdistrict transfers.
But in an era of declining enrollment, the district of choice program is an option to shore up finances and fill up seats. It’s an open question whether districts will seize the opportunity.
