Earlier this week, Bob Dunning had a column in which he described the letters sent from the Davis School District that told him his three children in elementary school were truant for missing three days of classes due to a trip to Disneyland.
“”This letter is to inform you that your child has not been attending school as she/he should. According to the California Education Code 48260, she/he is now a truant.”
I paused for a minute to call one of the little truants in from the street to see if maybe she had been sneaking away from school during recess and spending all day at Fluffy Donut without telling us.
“Total Daily Absences: 3,” the letter went on in bold-faced, you-are-really-in-trouble lettering.
Wow, three absences in eight months makes one a truant these days? “
In my conversation with him, it appeared that Mr. Dunning was most upset by the tone of the letters. I can somewhat sympathize with him on that point, there is a difference between children who are actually skipping school and parents taking their children on trips.
But from the district’s standpoint, if everybody did what the Dunning family did, it would be a huge problem. Three days does not sound like a lot, but if every student in the Davis school district took off three days to go to Disneyland it would end up costing the district over a million dollars in lost ADA money. Given our current deficit that is something the district probably wants to avoid.
The Vanguard spoke with Pam Mari, who as Director of Student Services, she is the point person on dealing with a truancy problem. She acknowledged that perhaps the letter to elementary parents is too harsh. “Secondary parents understand the strong statement and level of concern expressed in the letters.”
From the school district’s standpoint “truancy” is not “delinquency.” Truancy, according to the district policies, simply means that upon three occasions the student has been absent without “valid reason.” Going to Disneyland, while fun, is not a valid reason.
The District was concerned enough with the Dunning column, that Pam Mari sent me her own piece to run as an explanation of attendance policy.
Attendance Accounting: Is it New or Does It Just Seem So?
by Pam Mari
There has been a great deal of discussion in the media recently about attendance and truancy rates in our region highlighting the negative effects on a child’s education as well as our district finances. We would like to offer some information that might help students and their parents/guardians understand the obligations of the Davis Joint Unified School District related to school attendance laws.
When students are absent from school, the State allows the absence to be excused for a medical illness, appointments related to health, and other personal reasons listed at the end of this article.* Excused absences carry the right to make up work and a period of time to do that with no penalty. That is why it is essential for parents to inform the school staff of absences. In turn we try to keep parents well informed about their child’s attendance via personal calls, automated calling systems, and Parent Connect.
Recently school office staff have received calls from parents who have been under the impression that calling in the absence to the school automatically excuses the student. It certainly accounts for the student’s whereabouts which is paramount to keeping him or her safe. However, it is the reason for the absence, not the parent call that determines if the absence is excused or unexcused. .
Absences are coded as “unverified”** until we hear from the parent/guardian. The parent or guardian has three school days to call in the absence so it can be coded either “unexcused” or “excused.” Other than the specified reasons allowed by the State, all absences are unexcused.*** This is not a district decision; it is Education Code and required attendance accounting. If no call is received after three school days, then the “unverified” code becomes permanent and the absence counts as unexcused and cannot be changed thereafter
When students are unexcused, they do not have automatic rights to make up the missed work, and they may be subject to intervention if they accumulate more than three days of unexcused absence. Education Code also requires that the District send a formal letter after three days of unexcused/unverified absence and additional letters for any more absences of this type. Therefore, it is also essential to avoid unexcused absences.
Please understand that this effort to determine the status of absences is unrelated to collecting school funding. The State does not fund a single day of student absence for any reason, not even the excused days. Keeping track of the reasons for absences is an Ed Code requirement related to compulsory education and the parent responsibility to make sure their child is in school.
When children are ill, we all want them to recover sensibly, and also avoid infecting others. Likewise, extraordinary situations may occur which require being out of school. However, in the case of an elective absence, we hope parents will weigh the lost instructional time for their child as well as the lost funding to the school against the reason for the absence. The district offers short-term independent study to students whose parents are removing them for five or more days. The missed days then become instructional days, the absences are excused, and State funding is allotted for those days.
Please call your school if you have further questions or need more information. We want to work together for the benefit of all our students.
*Excused absences: illness; quarantine; medical, dental, optometry, chiropractic service; funeral for immediate family member, limited to one day in California, three days out of state; jury duty; medical appt for a child in the custody of the student; justifiable reason (court appearance, religious holiday/ceremony, employment conference) with written request of parent/guardian and approved by the principal or designee. Ed Code 48205:
** Unverified=no parent/guardian communication with the school
*** Unexcused= parent/guardian authorized absence but not for the Ed Code reasons stated above in *
Pam Mari is the director of Student Services and deals with issues in the district such as attendance and truancy.
Let me see: Disneyland? School? Disneyland? School? Sorry, Pam–Disneyland wins, hands down!
I say good planning, the lines at Disneyland are shorter during the school year.
Dunning’s only point was that the letter was too harshly worded. The District conceded that point. That should have been the end of a non-story.
“If everybody did what Dunning did,it would be a huge problem.” No doubt, but in the history of the Davis School District, I’ll bet there has never been an single instance where EVERY student was voluntarily removed for 3 days. The “huge problem” is really a non-reality. Solution: delete two mediocre column topics and one unnecessary and poorly worded letter and we forget this ever happened.
The point Mr. Coleman, which as a former Police Chief you should understand both from a behavioral as well as a financial standpoint, what may seem like a minor impact individually, can collectively be a huge problem. The fact is the district is in a crisis, $5.7 million deficit on top of over $6 million in previous cuts, they cannot afford to bleed money that should be coming to them through ADA.
Mr. Coleman, give David a break, it’s hard to come up with meaningful subjects on a daily basis so sometimes he reaches real deep into that barrel.
Solution: delete two mediocre column topics and one unnecessary and poorly worded letter and we forget this ever happened.
Then there might not be anything to talk about.
The following quote is currently on the District’s home page:
[quote]As always, sick children should remain at home so they may recover quickly and not infect others. All other absences should be avoided. We ask that you:
*schedule family vacations only during school holidays,
*request an independent study contract for absences of more than five consecutive school days, or
*consider reimbursing the district for lost revenue ($40 per child per day) when students will be absent for family vacations.[/quote]
This is an issue of personal responsibility on the part of the parent if you participate in the California public school system.
If you don’t like the rules, then appeal to the legislature to change them.
As for the tone of the letter, perhaps the district could soften that next time by change the greeting to: “Hey, Bob, ol’ buddy,”
Dunning took issue with what he was being told by the district. He decided to make it a public issue instead of keeping it to himself. David/Pam decided to respond.
Good for them all, now maybe more folks can be aware of fiscal consequences and how to avoid them.
Fail to see how this is a bad thing.
If they ask that we schedule family vacations only during school holidays, then we should ask that they schedule spring break at the same time as UC Davis. To my knowledge, they have only done this once in the past 10 years. In all of the other years, we and many families have not been able to make use of one of the school’s biggest blocks of vacation days. So if the dates of our vacations are so important to them, they owe us an explanation.
Lets see, three kids times three days equals nine missed days of funding for the shhool district. At $40. per missed day, Mr. Dunning’s little holiday cost the district $360.00. How bout if god ol Bob just reimburses the district $360.00 and we call it a wash! r.b.
If they ask that we schedule family vacations only during school holidays, then we should ask that they schedule spring break at the same time as UC Davis.
UCD spring break is determined by when the quarter ends. DJUSD appears to schedule spring break usually to coincide in some way w/ an Easter weekend. I don’t argue one way or another. Just observing. Yours is a valid point, though.
How bout if god ol Bob just reimburses the district $360.00 and we call it a wash!
Sounds to me like at least one Dollar-a-Day donation to DSF is in order.
[i]”… if every student in the Davis school district took off three days to go to Disneyland it would end up costing the district over a million dollars in lost ADA money.”[/i]
Yes, unless the school district just lied and made up attendance statistics.
I have no idea how scrupulously honest our district is, or other districts are, with their attendance numbers. However, I know they all have a very strong incentive to cheat–that is, to lie and say, “Yep, Johnny didn’t miss one day of school this year. Give us our full allotment for him.”
If you think this sort of cheating never happens, think again. Human beings respond to incentives. Give them an incentive to inflate their ADA stats and, surprise!, they will be inflated.
I have no idea how scrupulously honest our district is, or other districts are, with their attendance numbers.
I have been told that the district (and all other districts in California) are subject to random audits throughout the year. The state comes in and picks a school (or two) on a particular day and checks to see how the attendance record compares to reality.
Let me see: Disneyland? School? Disneyland? School? Sorry, Pam–Disneyland wins, hands down!
You know, it was never going to be a fair to make that comparison. Although the Davis schools come in a very close second, I think Disneyland does advertise itself as the “Happiest place on Earth!”
Pam Mari: “Please understand that this effort to determine the status of absences is unrelated to collecting school funding. The State does not fund a single day of student absence for any reason, not even the excused days. Keeping track of the reasons for absences is an Ed Code requirement related to compulsory education and the parent responsibility to make sure their child is in school.”
Am I missing something here? According the Pam Mari, absences having nothing to do with school funding.
If I want to take my child to Disneyland off season, I see no reason why I should not be able to do just that.
[quote]Am I missing something here? According the Pam Mari, absences having nothing to do with school funding.
If I want to take my child to Disneyland off season, I see no reason why I should not be able to do just that.[/quote]
I think Mari is referring to determining why a student is absent — excused, unexcused, or unverified. I think it’s reasonable to determine why for reasons of safety — does the parent know (in the case of secondary students), is there a pattern of disease in the community, what’s going on. I understand Mari to mean that absences do indeed affect funding, but not the status of the absences.
If by “off season” you mean during the regular school year during a school day, obviously no one would haul you or Dunning off to jail if you chose to take your school child to Disneyland, but it is a drain on school resources by way of lost funding if you did.
Taken cumulatively over an entire school year, enough unexcused absences result in enough money that the district doesn’t receive that it has to make cuts, which may include peoples’ jobs.
“According the Pam Mari, absences having nothing to do with school funding.”
Maybe David Greenwald could take a leaf from Bob Dunning’s book. Instead of straining to write non-story columns like this to fill the “news hole” every day, perhaps he could get out and interview some of our memorable Davis characters and profile them. A little humor wouldn’t hurt once in a while either…
Frankly Brian, this was a story submitted by Pam Mari, I could have let it stand alone but a lot of people may not have understood the context, so I added context by way of introduction. Anyone who submits a story to the Vanguard (within reasonable bounds) can get their story/ editorial printed. It’s not accurate to say I strained to write a non-story, I actually bumped another story to run this today rather than over the weekend.
Sheesh, get over it people. Dunning maybe cost the school a few bucks but he helped LA’s employment picture and if they flew he helped our ailing airlines. It all goes around. Are we supposed to be inmates to the school schedule? Something tells me Dunning’s kids are doing very well in school so a little vacation is good for the soul.
I like Bob Dunning, and by extension his brood. However, I thought it was silly of him to make a personal battle with the school district a public matter, unless he was using his column as a bully pulpit, in which case it was something of an abuse of his role as a resident entertainer writing for the Enterprise. FWIW, I didn’t like the tone.
wdf1: “I think Mari is referring to determining why a student is absent — excused, unexcused, or unverified. I think it’s reasonable to determine why for reasons of safety — does the parent know (in the case of secondary students), is there a pattern of disease in the community, what’s going on. I understand Mari to mean that absences do indeed affect funding, but not the status of the absences.
If by “off season” you mean during the regular school year during a school day, obviously no one would haul you or Dunning off to jail if you chose to take your school child to Disneyland, but it is a drain on school resources by way of lost funding if you did.
Taken cumulatively over an entire school year, enough unexcused absences result in enough money that the district doesn’t receive that it has to make cuts, which may include peoples’ jobs.”
Assuming the school loses money for any absences, then they lose money if my kid has a cold and stays home. Should I send my child to school when sick, just to make sure the school doesn’t lose any funding? I’m with Bob Dunning here – it is a parent’s perogative to decide whether to take a few days vacation on the off season on occasion with the children. And I have long been disgusted with the tone of communications from the school, which are very autocratic and arrogant. I remember first coming to this town in 1987 from the East Coast, and being shocked at the letters I was getting from the schools – “You better immunize your children or else”; “You better fill out these papers or this is how you will be punished”, etc.
Assuming the school loses money for any absences, then they lose money if my kid has a cold and stays home. Should I send my child to school when sick, just to make sure the school doesn’t lose any funding? I’m with Bob Dunning here – it is a parent’s perogative to decide whether to take a few days vacation on the off season on occasion with the children.
I have never been bothered by the language the district uses, but I accept that you and others may. Maybe I just have thick skin on that point. You can volunteer to edit some of their most egregious examples if you really care and it bothers you enough.
From everything I have read and experienced, the district has never advocated sending your kids to school sick. The district factors that into their budget assumptions (that roughly a certain percentage of kids will typically be sick during the year).
If you want to pull your kid out of school for vacation, the district asks parents to consider an absence of at least 5 days in a row in order to qualify for independent study, for which the district receives funding.
If you want to insist on a fiscally efficient school district, then it requires that families communicate and cooperate at some level. I also agree that it is a parent’s perogative, but there are consequences for making certain choices which affect other kids and parents in the district.
The school as institution is not the goal – education, broadly speaking, is the goal. This includes time for parents and children to be together. Maybe the problem is an ADA system that defines excused absences in an overly narrow way. What steps are being taken to change that?
Mike Adams: “The school as institution is not the goal – education, broadly speaking, is the goal. This includes time for parents and children to be together. Maybe the problem is an ADA system that defines excused absences in an overly narrow way. What steps are being taken to change that?”
Excellent point Mike!
Maybe the problem is an ADA system that defines excused absences in an overly narrow way. What steps are being taken to change that?
If you like schooling with more flexibility, and your child works well in an independent environment, the district offers the Davis School for Independent Study. It could give you and your kids the flexibility to do all kinds of activities together, and it doesn’t interfere with the state’s rigid ADA requirements of traditional school.