Attacking the Problems Behind Bad Attendance

Attendance counselor Stephan Blustajn is paying an afternoon visit to a modest apartment near downtown Los Angeles. Inside, a 15-year-old girl named Dora is on a couch, watching television.

“Are you bored?” Blustajn asks as a Spanish version of “The People’s Court” drones in the background.

Dora nods yes.

Blustajn is trying to coax Dora back to school, but it’s a hard sell.

Dora dropped out 2 1/2 years ago to care for her sick mother, and now the television and trips to her mother’s doctor fill her days.

“I want home study,” she tells Blustajn.

Dora’s case may seem extreme to outsiders, but not to Blustajn. She is just one of dozens of students on his caseload of truants and dropouts in the Pico-Union district.

As the pupil services and attendance--or PSA--counselor at Berendo Middle School, Blustajn gets a sobering view of how tumultuous home lives disrupt schooling in some of the city’s most crowded and impoverished neighborhoods.

Blustajn deals with students who are homeless and others whose families cram into hotel rooms or garages with no place to do homework.

He sees students without money for bus fare or proper clothes to wear, and others who are overwhelmed by the struggle to adjust to a new country with a new language.

It’s Blustajn’s job to help stabilize these students’ lives so they can return to school and be ready to learn.

Blustajn and his colleagues work closely with families and an array of social service agencies. In some incorrigible cases, the parents are recommended for prosecution for not ensuring their children’s attendance at school.

The attendance counselors represent a kinder, gentler and more sophisticated version of the truant officer of the past, whose role emphasized catching and punishing out-of-school students.

Most of the attendance counselors in the Los Angeles Unified School District have advanced degrees in social work or counseling. Blustajn (pronounced Blue-stahj-in) has a master’s degree in social work from USC.

“We look at attendance as a symptom of a greater problem. If you want to know how kids are going to do in school, just visit their home,” says Blustajn, 39, who is in his second year in the position after a series of other jobs, including working as a hospital emergency room technician.

Los Angeles Unified has 260 attendance counselors to cover its 660 schools. Only 98 campuses--including Berendo--have their own attendance counselor; others have part-time access to one. That access could be more difficult next year because of budget cuts that will force campus administrators to choose among counselors, nurses, psychologists and other support services.

Experts argue that attendance counselors should be protected against the budget ax because they play a vital role in improving children’s lives. There is also an economic reason to keep the staffers on the job: They raise school attendance levels, which are used to calculate school funding from the state.

“It doesn’t matter how well you’re teaching. If students aren’t in the classroom, they aren’t going to learn,” said David Kopperud, chairman of the state’s attendance review board, which guides attendance practices in California school districts.

“You really have to overcome that barrier before you can go on.”

Blustajn is sometimes a youngster’s last link to education.

During an afternoon of home visits last week, he started at the Frontier Hotel at 5th and Main streets in downtown Los Angeles--at the gritty edge of Berendo’s attendance border. On a bench inside the hotel lobby, Blustajn met with a mother whose 13-year-old daughter landed on his list because of repeated absences.

Last year, the girl said she was not attending school because of transportation problems. Blustajn gave her bus tokens until she could get a bus pass. Her attendance has improved. Now Blustajn is trying to help her family’s housing situation.

The parents and four children want desperately to move from the hotel, where the lobby stinks of cigarettes. Drunks and police compete for space on the sidewalks outside.

The family has been living in a one-bedroom hotel unit for a year and has been unable to come up with a deposit payment for an apartment elsewhere.

“I want to get out of here because ... my daughters see bodies taken out of here,” said the mother, Sherlette Jex, 30.

As Blustajn and Jex talked, the woman’s 2-year-old daughter played with her 6-month-old sister, strapped into a car seat on the bench. Twenty feet away, police were handcuffing an unruly man.

Blustajn told Jex that he would try to help her find the funds to move through a charity or other organization. Then it was to the Pico-Union district, at Dora’s small apartment, a few blocks from Berendo.

He had been nagging her about returning to school since he accidentally discovered her at home last year during a visit intended to check on her younger brother, Ramon.

At the time, Blustajn found Dora in bed with a cast on her left leg--she had been wounded in a drive-by shooting and has since recovered.

Advice Includes Other Options

On the visit last week, Blustajn once again urged Dora to finish her education, which she stopped in seventh grade. He told her that she could attend a continuation school or a skills center to learn a craft. She said she didn’t have any identification to register. So Blustajn pressed her to get an ID card at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

As they talked, Blustajn turned to Ramon, who was sitting on the couch, and offered a word of encouragement: “You’re doing really well, Ramon.” Ramon now has a much better attendance record and checks in with Blustajn every morning before school starts.

Before he left, Blustajn asked Dora: “So we have a plan?”

Blustajn wasn’t sure whether Dora would follow through. She had failed to show up for five previous appointments in his tiny office at Berendo.

But Dora did arrive to see Blustajn on Monday. He signed her up for an alternative program for high school dropouts. She could earn her diploma. .

“It’s all about following through for the future,” Blustajn told Dora. “When you go to school every day, even when you don’t want to, that’s following through.”

Dora looked toward the floor. She said barely a word. When they finished their meeting, however, she smiled faintly and said: “Thanks, Mr. Blu.”

The next day, Blustajn took Dora to enroll at her new school.