by Ryan Burris
CUSD students attended school 96 percent of the time for 15 years prior to the pandemic – from 2005 to 2020.
Since the pandemic, our average daily attendance has been holding steady at around 93 percent. This is a significant loss of classroom learning for students, and approximately $15 million dollar funding loss to the District.
To put this in perspective, a student missing two days of school every month will miss close to 10 percent of the school year. For Capistrano Unified students, over 30 percent of students in Transitional Kindergarten to grade five miss at least ten percent of the school year.
These absences also have a financial impact to our classrooms and campuses. With an additional $15 million dollars, we could:
- Hire 112 teachers
- Reduce class size by five students in every Kindergarten through Grade Five classroom across the District
- Increase our deferred maintenance projects threefold
If you are planning vacations and appointments, please make sure to review our Academic Calendars, currently published through the 2024-25 school year, so your students do not miss valuable classroom learning opportunities.