School flu absences return to normal

Absences caused by the H1N1 (swine) flu and other illnesses hit Petaluma schools hard a few weeks ago, but the situation has improved in the past few weeks.

“It’s actually a lot better than it was a month ago, and in terms of year-to-date attendance, we’re only down about one-half percent,” said Steve Bolman, the deputy superintendent for business and administration for Petaluma City Schools. “The absences aren’t significant at this point, but we’re just getting into the real flu season.”

Casa Grande High School, like many other local schools, had many absences during a brief period.

“We had about a three-week period in early October when we had high rates of absences due to illness, and a few kids were out for three, four or five days,” said Linda Scheele, the school’s principal. “But now our attendance is back to normal, in the high 90-percent range.”

The Old Adobe Union School District has had approximately the same number of absences as usual, said Super-intendent Diane Zimmerman.

“It’s difficult to say how many absences have been due to H1N1, and in tracking the situation, we have found no clustering of absences due to illness,” she said.

Compared with the last school year, in Petaluma City Schools as a whole, 35 to 40 more students are absent per day, and this affects state funding, which is based on average daily attendance.

The ADA for a district is found by dividing the total number of days of student attendance by the total number of days in the regular school year. A student attending every school day equals one ADA. Generally, ADA is lower than enrollment due to factors such as transience, dropouts and illness. The state collects ADA counts at the district, but not at the school level.

“Our ADA funding is affected any time we have an increase in absences. So, we have been very conservative in our attendance projections,” Bolman said.

Petaluma City Schools consists of two school districts — the Petaluma City Element-ary School District and the Petaluma Joint Union High School District. ADA totals affect elementary school districts this year, and high school districts next year.

(Contact Dan Johnson at dan.johnson@arguscourier.com)