Newark Unified To Target Truancy

Superintendent Dave Marken announced schools in Newark Unified School District will start to aggressively monitor absenteeism by changing the school’s culture.

Marken said he was inspired to do this when he learned how state prison officials use third grade truancy rates to plan for future capacity needs.

“It makes an impression – the correctional system analyzes elementary school attendance rates to estimate how many will end up in prison,” Marken said.  “People are just shocked by this. There are enormous social and economic consequences we can point to that start when kids in the earliest grades fail to come to school,” he said.

Enrollment is declining in Newark’s public schools at a rate that is expected to continue on its downward trajectory, according to Elaine Nielsen, NUSD’s chief business official.  6,294 students in grades k-12 were on the roster during the 2013-14 school year. The average daily attendance rate is 96 percent of those students.

Marken’s endeavor magnifies the efforts of California Attorney General Kamala Harris who commissioned a report to quantify truancy rates in California schools.  The report found that hundreds of thousands of students in the state are chronically absent from school.  About one in five students are truant, according to the report. 

While Newark's truancy rates are not as high as other school districts, Superintendent Marken said district staff will be working to create a “culture of showing up.”  He said it is key that parents understand that missing class for family events or a vacation day undermines the school’s core mission.  

“There’s a subtle message being communicated when a parent takes a kid out of school to go visit grandma or so they can run some errands,” he said. “It plays out later when the child is old enough to make some of their own decisions and that’s when we see behaviors that put a student’s academic career at risk.”

District staff will be using a new management system to communicate this message and track attendance.