Oakland Unified School District leaders see attendance rates as critical to their plan to address a $100 million budget gap. Increasing attendance by even 1% overall could add $5 million in revenue.
That’s because state funds, which make up the biggest pot of money for the district, are based on a funding formula that uses students’ average daily attendance rates. Raising attendance a few percentage points could mean millions more for a district searching for a way out of its structural deficit.
Increasing attendance by 2% could yield an extra $10 million, covering 10% of the district’s deficit. But experts say doing this will take more than “show up for school” videos. Chronic absenteeism rates skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic and in OUSD, those rates have not fully recovered.
During the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 school years, around 14 to 15% of students were chronically absent, meaning they missed more than 10% of school. In the 2018-2019 school year, when Oakland teachers went on strike for seven days, chronic absenteeism rose to nearly 32%. In the school year ending in 2022, it reached 45%, and in 2023, 61%. Today, that number has dropped dramatically, but about 25% of OUSD students are still chronically absent, higher than county and state averages, which are below 20%.
Next Wednesday, fiscal advisors from Hazard, Young, Attea, and Associates — the firm OUSD hired this month to oversee its fiscal sustainability work — are expected to present a detailed plan that fleshes out the balanced-budget scenario the board approved in December.
“One-time money cannot solve your structural problem,” Ruben Frutos, one of the fiscal advisors, said during a special board meeting on Tuesday. “It buys us time, sometimes it allows us to make great decisions, but ultimately, your budget needs to live for many years in a solvent situation.”
Frutos said that closing the gap between enrollment and attendance is crucial to solvency, since the district staffs its schools based on enrollment, but receives state funds based on attendance.
Raising — and maintaining — high attendance will take a comprehensive, districtwide approach, experts told The Oaklandside, with adequately trained staff at every school who understand the diverse reasons why kids stay home and are equipped to address them. But with across-the-board budget cuts on the table, schools risk losing those investments as they make tradeoffs that pit priorities against each other.
At the core of this work is building relationships, said Hedy Chang, the CEO of Attendance Works, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that works with school districts to address chronic absenteeism.
“Feeling noticed, feeling a sense of belonging, feeling that someone cares about whether you show up or not helps you show up to school, period,” Chang told The Oaklandside. “Relationships not only help with attendance, they help with conditions that make kids feel excited about learning.”
A middle school that’s turned the tide
At West Oakland Middle School, the goal is a 96% attendance rate. That’s missing seven or fewer days in a year. The school’s current rate is 92%, which is up nearly 8 percentage points from two years ago — the biggest jump among OUSD middle schools during that time. The school has cut its chronic absenteeism rate by more than half, from 55% to 26%.
West Oakland Middle School saw the biggest increase in attendance rates among middle schools. Credit: Kathryn Styer Martínez
Key to that improvement, Neha Ummat, the school’s principal, said, was hiring staff dedicated to attendance and building relationships with students. The school brought on a community school manager in 2022, and the following year, an attendance specialist. They’re part of West Oakland Middle’s attendance team, which also includes the school counselor and community partners. At weekly meetings, they review overall attendance trends as well as individual student records.
This enables the team to take a tiered approach, an evidence-based strategy for combating absenteeism, Chang said. Tier 1 includes any efforts that target all students and families, such as awareness campaigns and clear communication about expectations.
At West Oakland Middle, that means homeroom teachers reviewing what counts as an excused versus unexcused absence and asking their students to fill out attendance success plans. As part of the success plans, completed twice a year, students list the reasons they enjoy coming to school, the hurdles that keep them from school, and possible workarounds to those hurdles.
The plans replaced an attendance pledge that the district used to have students take.
“A lot of times when people sign pledges, what does that actually mean? What are the clear actions?” Emilio Ortega, the school’s community school manager, said. “Our thinking was to help them identify the reasons they love coming to school, identifying the barriers and the specific ways we’re going to address those barriers, and then provide them with solutions.”
Tier 2 supports are designed to reach students who are at risk of chronic absenteeism — those missing school 5 to 7% of the time — and here incentives play an important role. West Oakland students with inconsistent attendance can get a cup of hot chocolate after coming to school for five days straight. After 15 days in a row, they get a pizza party.
“Middle school is the time parents start to give them the freedom to get to school on their own,” Ummat said. “Middle schoolers are motivated by food and goodies. It doesn’t take much to get them excited.”
Extracurriculars are also a strong motivator, Ummat said. West Oakland Middle has a robust arts program, and students are required to show up to school to take part in performances.
Measuring absenteeism by days, in addition to percentages, makes it easier to communicate with families when their child risks hitting the “chronic” threshold, Ortega said. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing 10% of school — two days a month or 18 days a year. Measuring by days also helps staff intervene earlier, Chang said.
“You’re noticing the kid before they’ve missed so much school that they’re academically at risk, the kid that missed two days in the first month,” she told The Oaklandside. “If you wait until they’re missing day 18, you’re going to be too late.”
Tier 3 supports are reserved for those who are the most severely absent, and they often involve bringing in families and wider support services. Ortega recounted the case of one student who was missing a lot of school for doctor’s appointments. Ortego told the parents that West Oakland Middle has a health center on campus and encouraged the family to seek services there in order to avoid all those absences.
West Oakland Middle has a sizable Muslim population, and school leaders noticed that many students were missing school during Ramadan, the month of fasting. Emphasizing the importance of attending school and reminding families that students could request accommodations to be more comfortable while fasting helped improve attendance, Ummat said.
“We’re not necessarily going to have them do P.E. when they haven’t eaten, and we won’t make them go to the cafeteria if they can’t eat, but school is an important place for students who are fasting,” she told The Oaklandside.
Emily Bailard, the CEO of EveryDay Labs, a Redwood City-based organization that promotes best practices around attendance, said a comprehensive approach that emphasizes attendance from district leadership down to site staff is essential.
“Truly prioritizing attendance improvement as one of the district’s main goals means having that be top of mind for principals, it’s discussed in principal meetings, data is shared in every meeting, and school leaders are held accountable for attendance improvement,” Bailard told The Oaklandside. “And for that to trickle down to every staff member helping attendance as part of their job.”
In a Dec. 3 memo from Saddler and other senior staff outlining OUSD’s attendance strategy, the multi-tiered team approach is projected to cost around $340,000 per school to staff the key positions. The report notes that these positions can be funded in part with restricted dollars. Any gains OUSD sees from attendance goes into the district’s general coffers, where the deficit is.
But ensuring those staffers are properly trained is usually the purview of OUSD’s central office, which is expected to absorb major cuts in the coming year.
Bailard cautioned against districts in financial distress taking the narrowest, classroom-only approach to what they keep and what to cut. She suggested districts think broadly about what students need to be successful.
“When you’re really thinking about what things are need-to-have versus nice-to-have, oftentimes districts make the mistake of defining that as protecting the classroom and investments in the classroom and then cut everything else,” she said. “I would encourage districts that are facing big budget cuts right now to really think about what needs to be prioritized so students are present and ready to learn.”
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