Attendance Drop Disrupts L.A. Schools

Thousands of students have formally checked out of Los Angeles schools, switched to other campuses or not yet showed up for classes after last month’s earthquake, creating disruptive shifts in enrollment throughout the huge system.

The enrollment changes affect campuses across the Los Angeles Unified School District, even those outside the hardest-hit San Fernando Valley. Although some schools have lost record numbers of students, others have picked up enrollment as families move to new homes in the city.

“Boy, talk about movement--it’s astounding,” said Assistant Supt. Sally Coughlin, who oversees the 131 elementary schools in the Valley. “We knew there would be some movement but we didn’t expect this.”

The new attendance patterns could have far-reaching consequences for the 640,000-student district, including the prospect of new budget cuts because of lost per-pupil funding from the state and widespread teacher transfers next fall.

In an effort to reverse the trend and raise attendance, the district has directed principals and attendance clerks to seek out students who have not showed up for school since the Jan. 17 earthquake or to at least find out why they are absent--a technicality that could keep state funds flowing.

Principals and teachers have scoured parks and Red Cross shelters looking for wayward students and clerks have spent nights and weekends on the phone to track down children. Because of the large number of displaced families, however, clerks are having a difficult time locating students and their parents.

The numbers tell the story:

* At Canoga Park Elementary, about 75 pupils formally checked out after the earthquake and another 220 still have not been located. The school’s enrollment dropped from 838 students before the quake to 543.

* At Limerick Avenue Elementary in Canoga Park, 54 students notified the office they were leaving, 41 have not been located, 13 recently enrolled from other district schools and another five pupils reported they were too afraid to return to the campus. The school’s enrollment dropped from 902 before the quake to 815.

* At Hart Street Elementary in Canoga Park, 42 students checked out, 61 cannot be located, 12 recently enrolled and 16 have not returned because of fear and trauma from the quake.

* At Monroe High School in North Hills, 121 students checked out and another 200 have not returned to school for unknown reasons. Enrollment dropped from 2,350 students to 2,029.

* And at Fremont High School in South-Central Los Angeles, enrollment has picked up by 10 students who were attending El Camino Real High in Woodland Hills. That campus, badly damaged by the quake, still has not reopened. But the typical mid-semester enrollment surge at Fremont has failed to materialize, leaving the school with 2,585 students.

A survey of enrollment taken by the district this week at 71 Valley elementary schools showed that at least 1,756 students have formally withdrawn from school, at least 513 cannot be located and 186 pupils have said they are too traumatized to return. About 844 other students have switched campuses since the earthquake. The survey covered only half of Valley elementary schools and no secondary schools.

“I’ve been here 16 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Fanny Italia, who oversees attendance at Patrick Henry Middle School in Granada Hills. “It’s very unusual. Families are moving to South Dakota, Ventura, Florida, Mexico, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Brazil, Texas and San Jose.”

Attendance has plummeted even more dramatically in the district’s adult schools, which offer classes in English as a second language, business skills and other subjects, mostly at night. Of the 400,000 students who were enrolled in adult school on Jan. 17, about 250,000 have not returned, prompting district officials to spend $30,000 in English and Spanish advertising to alert students that the schools are open.

“It’s housing, it’s jobs and it’s post-traumatic stress,” said Martin Conroy, principal at the Reseda Community Adult School, which has lost nearly 600 of its 2,500-student enrollment. “A tremendous number of people have lost housing and are too preoccupied to come back.”

The enrollment drop in the regular day schools is considerably more severe than after the Sylmar quake in 1971, when the district lost 1,500 students, including 835 who could not be accounted for by school officials. Nine campuses in the Sylmar and San Fernando areas were the hardest hit then by the attendance declines.

This year, schools are working doggedly to find students, with some campus attendance clerks working full time to locate pupils. In some cases, the mystery is only cleared up when parents call from new homes in other cities or when school districts call from Florida and Texas, among other places, requesting student records.

The Los Angeles district is also sending buses to Red Cross shelters to gather up homeless students and take them to school. Of the 1,654 people who stayed in shelters on Tuesday, between 600 and 660 were children, officials said.

“We’re casting a fishing net to try to get as many of these kids back as we can,” said Thane Opfell, the assistant principal at Monroe. “I have people making phone calls and I’ve sent letters home telling parents that school is safe and open and they should send their children back.”

At Limerick Elementary, attendance clerk Sonja Bowman worked last weekend calling parents and relatives, looking for students who had not returned. She located 40 pupils but could not persuade all of them to return.

“We didn’t suffer structural or physical damage but our biggest concern is finding the kids--getting them back and finding out where they’ve gone,” said Ronni Ephraim, the principal at Limerick. “When you lose all these kids and get new kids, the whole dynamic of your school changes. It shakes up your life in a lot of other ways than just the physical shaking from the earthquake. It’s taken a big toll.”

The story is the same throughout the district. Principals say their campuses are in a state of upheaval--many class sizes have shrunk, students are enrolling in new courses and teachers are fearful that the declining attendance could mean transfers and layoffs.

As Canoga Park Elementary, Principal Barbara Gutierrez said: “It’s creating a certain mourning period for the teachers as they realize which kids we’ve lost. People are readjusting but I think it’s been hard.”

Some schools say that attendance is sporadic. Students show up one day and then don’t return for a week while their families look for permanent homes.

“They come a day and then not for two days,” said Christina P. Alayon-Young, a first-grade teacher at Justice Street Elementary in West Hills. “It’s difficult but you try to keep them up with what they missed without stressing them out about it.”

Some parents, particularly those in the shelters, say they are worried about sending their children back to school. “My little girl is afraid to go to school and to be separated,” said Celia Valdez, a mother of five, who is staying at the Red Cross shelter at Fulton Middle School in Van Nuys. “She worries about it too much.”

Valerie Muller, whose son attended Sherman Oaks Elementary, sent the first-grader to stay with her family in Germany. Muller, whose condominium was destroyed in the quake, said her son was too afraid to remain in Los Angeles.

“It was really, really devastating to him,” Muller said. “He says he will never, ever come back to California.”

District officials say they are concerned about the large numbers of students too afraid to return to school. At Hazeltine Avenue Elementary in Van Nuys, for example, 22 students have not showed up for class because of earthquake trauma.

Coughlin, who oversees the elementary schools, said she will encourage principals to get crisis counselors to meet with those students.

The enrollment shifts lead to potential budgetary problems for the cash-strapped school system. The district, which closed all schools for five days after the earthquake, has received assurances the system will not lose state per-pupil funding for that time.

But the district probably will lose money because of the hundreds of students who have not yet returned to school and who cannot be accounted for. Schools are required to maintain a daily record of school attendance and receive $4,200 per pupil a year. Unexcused absences, however, are not repaid by the state.

Although district and school officials expected some shifts in enrollment because of the quake, they say the changes are greater than initially anticipated, making planning difficult. A full report on enrollments won’t be prepared for at least two months, said budget services director Henry Jones.

“It’s been a while since we had a normal year when we weren’t dealing with riots, floods or earthquakes,” Jones said. “We’ve had some kind of natural disaster for the last couple of years.”

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