School District Miscalculated on ‘Daughter-to-Work’ Day

School officials say now that they were responding to a financial problem that doesn’t really exist when they recently decided to withdraw their support for today’s “Take Your Daughter to Work Day.”

So next year, daughters in the Ventura Unified School District will probably have the district’s blessing if they skip school to spend the day with mom or dad by participating in the popular work-experience program founded in 1993, Supt. Joseph Spirito said Wednesday.

District officials, acting on auditors’ information that they would lose up to $20 in state money for each participating student, directed principals at all 27 schools not to urge students to participate in the special day or to promote the event.

But Spirito said the district’s position was apparently based on misinformation, considering assertions from state officials Wednesday that districts lose less than $1 per student when they miss school to go to work with their parents.

“Under this new information, I would like to go back to staff and reconsider for next year’s day because I support their opportunity to go to jobs with their parents,” he said.

“Take Our Daughters to Work Day” has grown nationwide and in some places has expanded to include sons and daughters. The event was launched in 1993 by Ms. Foundation to raise the confidence of girls and give them a glimpse of work opportunities.

It is an event that the district had no problem supporting until this year. But after district auditors concluded that the state would withhold attendance payments, administrators notified principals.

“Ventura Unified will not encourage or publicize the event. . . ,” Administrative Services Director Arlene Miro wrote in a memo to each campus. The financial basis for that decision was read to students at some schools.

“We’re not saying you can’t go, but we’re saying parents that desire to take their child, they just have to have a note,” Miro said in an interview.

She said she could not estimate the district’s loss from the program, even at the erroneous $20 per student. She said she did not know how many Ventura students participate. But she thought that the financial loss would be substantial.

State officials said they wanted to clear up such widespread misperceptions. There’s been an honest misunderstanding about how the finances work, said John Gilroy of the state Department of Education.

“It has very little economic impact and when they think it does, it’s because they don’t understand how the system works,” he said.

The time that it really counts to have the students in school is from the first day of school to April 15, he said. That is when the daily attendance of students counts most to apportion about 90% of state funds.

Before the first daughter-to-work day, state officials encouraged the Ms. Foundation to hold the event after April 15 so that there would be little financial impact, he said.

Officials at other local districts said they had not taken much notice of the daughter-to-work day.

Supt. Mario Contini of the Fillmore Unified School District said he did not realize that today was the day, but he said he would support the program even if it cost his district $20 a day per student.

By his own reckoning, Gary Mortimer, the Conejo Valley Unified School District’s assistant superintendent for business services, thinks that going to daughter-to-work day is as valid as missing school for a doctor’s appointment or field trip--which are counted as paid attendance by the state.

“I can’t speak for the school district, but as a father and employee who has taken my child to work, yeah, the student [attendance] should count,” he said.

The lost money is negligible, he said.

“Last year, we didn’t see any absenteeism that significantly affected the district” on the day, he said. “We have 18,000 kids spread out over 180 school days. I think that a few going to work with mom or dad doesn’t have a significant affect.”