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A comprehensive Approach to Improving Student Attendance in Los Angeles County a report from the School Attendance Task Force


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Efforts to Move from Criminalization to Prevention- and Research-Based Alternatives


During the past two years, the LAPD has collaborated with Public Counsel, the Community Rights Campaign, and the ACLU of Southern California, the Los Angeles Unified School Dis­trict (LAUSD), the Mayor’s office, and the Los Angeles City Council, as well as the courts and various other regional government agencies to revise existing LAPD procedures aimed at reduc­ing the number of daytime curfew tickets written to students, particularly African-American and Latino students. The resulting directive, issued in March 2011, instructs ticket task forces gener­ally not to cite students during the first hour of classes and, instead, to help students get back to school. Other changes are designed to ensure that students stay in school so that they can acquire an education.

The LASPD has engaged in a similar collaborative effort and has met regularly with community-based organizations—including Dignity in Schools, the Community Rights Campaign, the ACLU SC, the Youth Justice Coalition, Public Counsel, CADRE, and the Children’s Defense Fund—to revise its existing procedures and reduce the number of daytime curfew tickets for youth on their way to school. The resulting directive, issued on October 19, 2011, focuses cita­tion efforts on students who are intentionally avoiding school, and utilizes research-based prac­tices such as counseling students, relationship-building, and linking to community-based resources to assist students struggling with ongoing tardiness or poor attendance. The LASPD and LAPD directives are included in Appendix B.



Additionally, City Councilmember Tony Cárdenas introduced a motion in the fall of 2011 to make common-sense changes to the existing Los Angeles curfew ordinance that would redirect curfew enforcement to those students who are intentionally avoiding school or loitering in public spaces, and target resource-based community and school interventions for those students as opposed to issu­ing fines. (A copy is included as Appendix 00.0.0.0.0Appendix C.) Specifically, this motion would:

  • Limit curfew enforcement on public sidewalks immediately adjacent to school grounds, school entrances, or school grounds so that youth at school or on their way to school are not ticketed

  • Limit enforcement for young people going directly to or returning directly home from a public meeting or a school-related sporting event, dance, or activity

  • Limit enforcement for a young person who is traveling to school, regardless of tardiness

  • Provide that if a police officer does not document that he or she has assessed whether or not one of the statutory exceptions—such as a medical illness—applies before issuing the cita­tion, or does not provide basic information regarding the student’s age and time of cita­tion (for example, during the school day), the court can decide to dismiss the citation

  • Provide that citations not be punishable by a fine but, rather, that students be directed to par­ticipate in a community or school resource-based program, such as a tutoring, mentor­ing, credit recovery, after-school program, or a teen or peer court program that helps address the root causes of truancy

  • Give students the option of enrolling in a community or resource-based program and pro­viding proof of program enrollment and completion to the court in lieu of their missing addi­tional school time to attend court hearings

  • Provide that LAPD share bi-annual statistics related to curfew enforcement with the City Council

The Los Angeles County District Attorney and the Los Angeles City Attorney have both imple­mented truancy intervention programs and have dedicated staff to work with students and parents at an early stage of truancy identification. The District Attorney’s Abolish Chronic Truancy Pro­gram (ACT) has been studied by the Rand Corporation and is an American Bar Association model program for addressing truancy. The ACT program, which served approximately 58,000 stu­dents and parents from September of 2006 to June of 2011, deals primarily with elementary-aged chil­dren and operates by sending deputy district attorneys and hearing officers into schools to work with students and families. At participat­ing schools, students with attendance issues are identified and referred to the program. Students assigned to the program are longitudinally tracked for both further truancy and for subse­quent involvement in the juvenile delinquency sys­tem. Annual inter­nal reviews have demonstrated a 50 percent reduction in truancy rates among students referred to the program, and only 1 per­cent of students who are in the ACT program are later identified by the Los Angeles Probation Department as being involved in the justice system.16

The City Attorney’s Truancy Prevention Program has educated over 250,000 families about the importance of attending school. The pro­gram’s letters have directed over 70,000 families to gen­eral assemblies where families are taught the legal and practical consequences of truancy. Addition­ally, almost 4,000 families have been referred to City Attorney Hearings for one-on-one intervention. From these families, counselors have taken over 200 to SARBs and have referred 70 families for court intervention that includes diver­sion in lieu of prosecu­tion.



This changing emphasis from law enforcement agencies coincides with an increasing recognition by school districts of the need to address student attendance in a comprehensive manner. Several school districts have begun implementing promising programs that focus on identifying the root causes of chronic absences and quickly providing resources to address those problems.

  • Long Beach Unified School District has a well-regarded Truancy Counseling Cen­ter pro­gram that has served as a model for other districts. The program’s purpose is to deter truan­cies and suspensions, serve as an alternative for the suspension of students to their homes, and provide a service to parents, students, and school staff. Recognizing that truancy is a symp­tom of other issues, program staff make efforts to engage parents when they come to pick up their youth and enroll them in parenting classes, counseling, and other services.

  • Lynwood Unified School District has implemented a three-tiered approach to improving school attendance, which consists of:

  • Prevention (a focus on school-site attendance data and increasing student and family aware­ness that every minute of school counts)

  • Intervention (requiring the district to partner and collaborate with other organizations to pro­vide such services as wraparound, case management, and mental health)

  • Recognition (identifying students, families, and school sites that show improvement in attendance)

  • In line with its existing School-Wide Positive Behavior Support Policy, the Los Angeles Uni­fied School District recently implemented a three-tiered approach to improving school atten­dance that provides different sets of interventions matched to the level of student tru­ancy. This approach recog­nizes that at the first tier—or “universal level”—providing a posi­tive school climate/culture is key, as are attendance expectations and school-wide incentives for achieving those expectations. (Additional information on this policy and initiative is pro­vided in Appendix 00.0.0.0.0Appendix D.) The district also has alternative education programs in place, such as its Frida Kahlo High School, that incorporate elements of the national Big Picture Learning approach promoting a “one child at a time” philosophy, a welcoming school culture, project-based learning, mentors, and commu­nity internships to promote attendance and academic achieve­ment.

LAUSD has also launched a media campaign to market improved attendance for its students, with a component that makes parents more aware of the detrimental effect of truancy on their children’s well-being. In implementing its approach, LAUSD recognizes that:

  • Attendance is a behavior, and we can teach good attendance habits.

  • We must intervene early with students having attendance problems.

  • Attendance must be closely monitored.

  • The effectiveness of interventions must be regularly assessed.

Moreover, because attendance is frequently a symptom of other underlying issues, LAUSD’s pol­icy directs that schools work to ensure that students identified as being at risk are assessed on six different levels—family dynam­ics, community, social-emotional, medical/physical, behav­ioral, and academic achieve­ment—to target appropriate intervention.

  • As described in greater detail beginning on page 14, the Alhambra Unified School District has implemented a research-based, comprehensive approach to addressing student attendance issues that is nationally recognized and has generated several years’ worth of improved stu­dent atten­dance data.

That positive progress is being made on all these fronts to incorporate and pursue alternatives to criminalization, as well as to implement strategies that address the root causes of school absences, is extremely promis­ing. However, the number of truancy citations remains high, and the overall rate of school atten­dance in the county remains lower than that necessary to ensure that young peo­ple achieve in school. As such, a countywide effort to systematize and integrate practices with other agencies, promote reforms, eliminate practices that have proven to be ineffec­tive and/or are not supported by research, and align the practices, funding, and resources of agencies with the research-based approaches that have proven to be most effective, is long overdue.
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