LOS ANGELES — LAUSD officials and employees, including principals and even Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, have knocked on 23,000 doors as part of an ongoing effort to address chronic absenteeism. 

It’s a problem that worsened during the pandemic. In the 2021-2022 school year, 45.2% of students were chronically absent — meaning they’d missed at least 9% of instructional days.   

Now Carvahlo says that number is down to 28%.

He credits the improvement at least partially on a program called iAttend.  

Rather than take a punitive approach to truancy, director for pupil services, Elsy Rosado says iAttend looks at absenteeism more holistically. 

The idea is to take in the whole picture, identify the hurdles that are keeping the kids out of school and work with families to remove them, connecting them to vital resources in and outside of the school system.

“Could be transportation problems, child care issues,” Rosado said. “What we do within LA Unified is really try to address all the root causes.”

Home visits, conducted monthly, are conducted by members of pupil services and attendance counselors and professionals who have a masters’ degree in social work, psychology and marriage and family counseling.

While Carvalho says the average daily attendance rate is at 93% this academic year — back to pre-pandemic levels — his concern is for the students who are still not attending.

“They are the most fragile kids in our community,” he said.