Chair Joseph on students in temporary housing attendance

And if...

The service is not being provided.

You're stepping in and providing, filling in that gap as well.

Right, Deputy Chancellor?

Yeah, we're going to, as DC Hawkins said, we're going to work side by side to make sure that students have what they need to access the program.

And real quick, thank you, Chair.

Our students in temporary housing, attendance, absenteeism rate, the last time we spoke here, the absenteeism rate is 63%.

Always want to know how are you working with different agencies to combine that effort, DSS, ACS.

How are you combining that effort to make sure that we're bringing down that ATIA absenteeism rate?

And also academics, right?

Not to only buy students in temporary housing items, but are we providing support, academic support, tutoring, mental health support?

How are we supporting our students in temporary housing?

Thank you for that question.

And as part of our conversations earlier, we really have spent in the last five months

concentrated effort to meet with our families and shelters and you know Flavia has led that effort so I'm going to lead her to talk I'm going to ask her to talk more about that.

Thank you Chancellor thank you Council Member Joseph I want to just first begin I know that you're well versed on the definition but just so that we all understand that when we say chronically absent

it means that a student at any given point has mean 10% of the school.

So 89% attendance, you're chronically absent.

We know that for vulnerable student population, there's always disproportionate

rates of chronic absenteeism.

And I want to call that out because counting today, we have 14 days of the school year remaining for all students and about five days for our high school students who take regents.

So if you're out 18 days of the year, you're chronically absent.

And it's not just an arbitrary number, it's a national standard because at that point, we begin to see correlations between academic achievement and attendance.

And that is why that number is so critical for all of us.

And with that, I want to say that the support that we're doing both for attendance and for students who, overall, and for students who are in temporary housing, Barry, from looking at central support.

So, for example, this year we recruited 32 attendance teachers who are part of our total attendance pool to provide dedicated home visits

during holidays, during weekends, and after work hours to try to make it more easily accessible to reach those families for students who have been out.

I can say that out of, in total, 4,327 visits were done for these students, particularly targeting students in shelters.

And an immediate result that we saw following those home visits is that those students then came into school.

Similarly, which I think is when we look at like what are the

What are the ingredients and what are the things that the central team led by Dr.

April Leon and the many leaders who are there have been doing is working with our schools

to ensure that the Title I funding that schools are receiving in their budget are really used in fidelity to look at, like, how do we mitigate the challenges for these students.

In 2022, there were approximately $72 million that were provided to schools across the system to support that.

2025-26, this current school year, that's $125 million.

And that's money that's sitting in each of our school budgets across the city, specifically dedicated to support the needs of students in shelters.

So one of the things that we're working to is not just that the money is spent, but that it's spent with fidelity and it's spent on things that are not commodities, but things like counseling support services, things like attendance interventions,

looking at college and career readiness programs.

Are there tutoring, like, for example, one of the work that we're doing with wind shelters where we have weekends programs that we do in those sites to meet the needs of those students.

So I think the idea is like looking at the whole infrastructure that exists for attendance, like the work that we do to deploy attendance teachers to superintendent, the work that we have done that has allowed us, in fact, to reduce chronic absenteeism by 9%

for students in shelters as an example.

But there's still so much more that we need to do.

For example, one of the work that we're doing with wind shelters where we have weekends programs that we do in those sites to meet the needs of those students.

That's also another example why initiative like community schools, in our second wave of community schools that we're expanding now about four years ago,

So I think the idea is like looking at the whole infrastructure that exists for attendance, like the work that we do to deploy attendance teachers to superintendent, the work that we have done that has allowed us, in fact, to reduce chronic absenteeism by 9%

one of the indicators that we were looking at were students, schools that had high concentration of students in shelters, because we know that wraparound supports

the notion of a caring adult, the notion that you're going to have schools that are going to be looking at data on a daily basis and making calls.

for students in shelters as an example.

We cannot wait for a 407, which is the indicator that you get when a kid is 10 days out.

This is like everyday strategy, making sure that you're making calls, making sure that you're making connections, making sure that you understand the reasons why students are out

and that you are creating individualized plan, particularly for students that we know that are vulnerable.

In addition to that, we're also working with the Department of Homeless Services to make sure that we

come up with strategies that allow us to make local executive order, that we get ahead of when this shelter movement that are happening so that we can plan thoughtfully and make sure that we're helping families navigate any changes that affect their home living situation

that has an implication for schools.

Because at the end of the day, we know that when we look at these students and their families that have been impacted by homelessness throughout years,

School stability and access to high-quality education is what's going to make a difference so that they don't end up in another situation.

like that and have a different future for the generations to come.

Great, thank you.

Councilmember Wong, followed by Lewis.