Lake, Mendocino county schools have two of worst truancy rates in California

Lake and Mendocino county elementary students have some of the highest truancy rates in the state, while Napa County has one of the lowest, according to a report out from the state attorney general’s office this week.

The figures are part of the fourth annual statewide report on elementary school truancy and chronic absenteeism, compiled by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Children’s Justice. The report showed that 210,000 K-5 students in California missed 10 percent of the 2015-2016 school year, and more than a quarter of all elementary school students were considered truant - with three or more unexcused absences - during the 2014-2015 school year.

Lake County reported the third-highest rate of truant elementary school students in the state: 35.6 percent. Mendocino County had a rate of 31.3 percent and Napa County 8.9 percent. Sonoma County fell in the middle with 21 percent of students marked truant.

A 2011 study from Attendance Works, a San Francisco-based organization that promotes attendance and its importance, shows that once students reach third grade, those who were chronically absent in kindergarten and first grade scored an average of 50 points lower on their English standardized test and 76 points lower on their math standardized tests.

Lake County Superintendent Brock Falkenberg doesn’t dispute that his county has a truancy problem, but questioned the accuracy of the DOJ report. Only two of his county’s six districts use Aeries, the attendance tracking software that provided data for the report. In Mendocino, Sonoma and Napa counties, the majority of districts do use Aeries, superintendents said.

“There’s no question that we have a truancy problem in Lake County,” he said. “What we need to do is address the problem, and so far the way that we’ve approached it hasn’t had a tremendous impact in changing those numbers.”

But efforts are being made.

In the middle of the 2014-2015 school year, the county implemented a task force to address the attendance issue, but it’s a slow fight in a community that struggles so much socioeconomically, Falkenberg said.

“You may also have a community that’s struggling with health and wellness issues, has less access to medical professionals ... kids are pulled out of school because parents have an appointment in Santa Rosa and they bring kids with them; they may be afraid that they won’t be back to pick the kid back up after school,” he said.

“Or you’re concerned with how you’re going to make sure you have a roof over your family’s head at night or food on the table. Often times the school issues become not the priority.”

The county does employ a truancy officer who makes home visits and coordinates truancy cases with the district attorney, but only four of the six districts pay for that resource.

Recently, the county has implemented a social media campaign to inspire parents to take a larger role in their children’s lives called Lake County Hero Project. Parents are given monthly and weekly challenges, like pledging to read to their children, or eat dinner together as a family.

“There’s a direct correlation between attendance behavior and grades,” said Warren Galletti, superintendent of the Mendocino County Office of Education.“This is something that we’re well aware of, and it’s a focus of each and every one of our districts within the county,” he said. “But there is no quick fix. It’s a process.”

He said it’s important districts focus on improving attendance rates among elementary school students because as students progress into middle school and high school, it gets more difficult to break the attendance habits formed early on.

Napa County Superintendent Barbara Nemko lamented her county’s reputation as the “rich kid population.”“This is a community that has a great deal of money,” she said, “but those aren’t necessarily the people who have kids in school. ... The people who have kids in schools are the ones that work in the hospitality industry, in the hotels and the restaurants.”

She said the county’s efforts to mitigate absenteeism and truancy are the reason it ranks so well, not its economic status.

One of the programs she highlighted is Saturday school, an option elementary schools offer about six times a year, where students who need extra help or missed an attendance day, can come to school on a Saturday morning and make that up.

Napa County also uses parent liaisons, so that if a child is absent, a fellow parent reaches out to the family rather than a staff member, comforting for parents who would rather speak to a community member than an authority figure, Nemko said.

Sonoma County Superintendent Steve Herrington said as districts throughout the state work to implement their Local Control and Accountability Plans, which are supposed to explain how district spending will improve student success, it will be interesting to see how attendance numbers change. One of the stated goals of the plan is “supporting student engagement, including whether students attend school or are chronically absent.”

In Sonoma County, districts use liaisons for foster children, have staff members who make home visits and work closely with the district attorney’s office to report truancy cases, Herrington said.

This is the fourth year Attorney General Kamala Harris has ordered the report on the heels of her work as district attorney in San Francisco to lower absentee rates there.

“Chronically absent children are far more likely to drop out of school and enter into the criminal justice system,” she said in a news release.

“This is a solvable problem: with better data, monitoring, and communication with parents, we can continue to make significant strides toward ensuring students are in school and on track to meet their full potential.”