Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Attendance topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Stockton Unified reports drop in chronic absenteeism, proposes real-time monitoring and attendance recovery pilots
Summary
District data show chronic absenteeism declined from 35.9% in 2022–23 to 27.3% midyear in 2025–26; director Ryan Hesse described pilots including real-time monitoring software, Saturday home visits and an Attendance Recovery program that could allow students to recover up to 10 days of attendance.
Stockton Unified staff reported a midyear decline in districtwide chronic absenteeism and outlined a set of interventions the district plans to pilot to further reduce the rate.
Ryan Hesse, director of admissions, child welfare and attendance, presented the key performance indicator showing the district's chronic absenteeism rate decreased from 35.88% (2022–23) to 27.29% at the midpoint of 2025–26, with 44 of 52 schools showing year-over-year improvement. Hesse emphasized that the state average is roughly 19–20% and the district still has work to do.
Hesse described three immediate strategies: piloting a chronic absenteeism monitoring software to provide principals near-real-time data and messaging tools; expanding targeted Saturday home visits and outreach via the district Truancy Outreach Services (TOS) team; and testing a statewide Attendance Recovery (AR) program that allows students to recover up to 10 days of attendance by attending district-aligned AR instructional sessions (four hours of AR instruction equates to one day of recovered attendance).
Trustees pressed for details about root causes and effectiveness. Hesse said the district is manually collecting more nuanced cause data because the Synergy system does not capture all reasons; he cited transportation, bullying and clerical/training issues as examples. Trustees also asked whether home visits reliably increase return-to-school rates; Hesse said outcomes vary by family and case, with some students responding after repeated visits.
District staff identified four pilot schools (Rio, Bush, Van Buren and Roosevelt) for the AR program and said they will share evaluation metrics and before-and-after analyses. Hesse said the district is halfway through a qualitative/quantitative study of practices at schools that lowered chronic absenteeism and that those findings will inform principal professional development.
Next steps: With board approval, staff will pursue the monitoring-software pilot, implement targeted Saturday home visits in spring and begin the Attendance Recovery pilot next month at select sites; staff will report back with outcome metrics and fiscal implications.
