GILROY
– As a preliminary plan to reduce more than $2 million in
spending over the next two years comes into focus, one issue keeps
resurfacing: Attendance.
GILROY – As a preliminary plan to reduce more than $2 million in spending over the next two years comes into focus, one issue keeps resurfacing: Attendance.
Gilroy Unified School District receives $47 million of its $67 million total revenue from the state for attendance. So, every time a student is absent, dollars are lost.
“One percent of attendance is $450,000,” said Steve Brinkman, assistant superintendent of administrative services.
To get a 1 percent attendance increase, the district would have to pick up an additional 13,000 school days between its 9,600 students, Attendance Officer Frank Valadez said. That would cover half of what must be cut from the district’s budget for the remainder of this school year and into 2004-05.
GUSD is in the process of finding ways to handle a deficit of roughly $2.5 million for the next two school years.
Absences were a contributing factor to the budget problem, leaving a $337,000 gap between expected and actual attendance numbers this year.
There were two major reasons for that: A December boycott by the state’s Latino community that kept students home from school and a senior cut day a couple weeks ago.
The two incidents alone caused more than 1,500 absences and cost GUSD about $47,000. Other factors contributed to lower attendance overall.
“I know the flu had something to do with it … but in general, it just seems that more students are sick and not going to school,” Valadez said.
Earlier budget forecasts predicted a 1.5 percent increase in attendance for the next three years.
As it stands now, GUSD is no longer anticipating an attendance increase and reduced projected increases for the next two years to three-quarters of a percent.
“I hope and I pray that these numbers come through because if they don’t, then we’re going to have significant issues,” Brinkman told trustees during a special budget session last Thursday.
The district is hoping some of the strategies implemented this year will pay off in future attendance increases.
A public service announcement is running at Platinum Theatres and posters will be put up at school and around town to encourage students to attend class. Schools now have specific attendance goals they are trying to reach, Valadez said.
A change in the way independent study is run should also bring in $218,000. Instead of being counted as absent, students who miss several days of school will be put on the independent study program and GUSD will receive attendance money even though they aren’t in class.
Valadez said the district may approve fewer home-schooling requests next year and will impose harsher penalties on students absent on a “cut day,” such as barring them from the prom or other extracurricular activities.
