Video:
Transcription:
Speaker 1: Welcome to Mondays with Maria, brought to you by The Foundation for Orange County Public Schools. Here's OCPS Superintendent, Dr. Maria Vazquez.
Dr. Maria Vazquez: Hi everyone. Jamie Holmes is back with us today. So Jamie, I want to talk about another very serious topic. It's actually a national crisis that's affecting so many of our schools and districts across the country, and that's absenteeism. We have seen such a tremendous increase in the number of students not attending schools and the number of students with chronic absenteeism.
Jamie Holmes:
Yeah, and I understand as well, September is attendance awareness month and, national research shows that across the country, as you said, students have been absent at record rates since schools reopened during the pandemic. So OCPS, you're seeing that impact, I guess, as well here.
Dr. Maria Vazquez: Oh, absolutely. And you can see the stark difference. After the pandemic last year over 30% of our students were absent 21 or more days. Wow. And originally we thought it was going to get back to pre-pandemic days, but, it hasn't and there's so many factors affecting absenteeism.
Jamie Holmes: So what is that number of students, of absences where a student is considered to be, I guess, at the level of being truant, right? To just being a chronic absentee individual.
Dr. Maria Vazquez: Right. So we have various intervals where we start to intervene with parents either through communication from the teacher all the way to a child study team. Those usually start, those beginning intervention start when a child is absent for five days. And that's typically a teacher reaching out saying, Hey, we noticed that Jamie has not been in school. He really needs to be here. And then it progressively goes up in various intervals. But once you reach that 21 days, now we're looking at chronic absenteeism.
Jamie Holmes: So the problem though, you guys have a score to keep, so to speak, right? You've got those instructional minutes, and that's important. And the state has that requirement a certain amount every school year. Right? So what does that essentially mean when you have this timeframe that you've got to hit and you've got this absentee issue.
Dr. Maria Vazquez:
Right. And for us as a district, we are more concerned about the child not being in school. So they're missing that instruction. And so when they are out and they come back in, now the teacher has to make sure that child gets instruction on the content that they missed. Sometimes that is not as in depth as it would've been during the, the time period that it was presented in the class. And then the child, when they get to a point of missing 21 or more days, they also then start to feel like they're behind. Right. And that's what we are seeing. That's what the data shows. There's a lot of factors impacting why students are missing school. Some of them might be, you know, transportation illness but the ones that are more difficult to address, deal with situations where a child doesn't feel connected to the school and they don't see value in coming to school.
Jamie Holmes: Well, you named a lot of factors there that it's, it's difficult for the district to have control over. So how do you tackle this?
Dr. Maria Vazquez: Sure. So there are interventions that we have put in place such as dedicated social workers at our middle and high schools that assist with truancy issues and absenteeism and helping families understand why school is so important, why their child needs to be there. Additionally, we work with agencies if there are counseling issues for the child, if we can't provide those counseling services, we work with those outside agencies.
Jamie Holmes: So what can the family do? Do they reach out to the school? Are there support systems in place here? If the family is, you know, struggling with this issue on a regular basis, what do they do?
Dr. Maria Vazquez: So absolutely they can reach out to their classroom teacher, they can reach out to a guidance counselor, administration. And as I mentioned, we have social workers that are dedicated to helping us deal with this problem that we're experiencing. We're here to help address this issue. If you or someone you know is tackling the issue, please reach out. Sometimes it's truly about forming a connection with the student to guide them and support them while they're at school. Thank you so much for watching, and thank you, Jamie, for joining us today.
Jamie Holmes: Thank you for having me.
Dr. Maria Vazquez: I will see you next time.
Speaker 1: Mondays with Maria has been brought to you by the Foundation for Orange County Public Schools, investing in our children today to strengthen our community tomorrow. For more OCPS news and information, visit theslice.cps.net.