District reports mixed attendance trends; conferences help short‑term but chronic absenteeism ticked up

Sequoia Union High School District officials told trustees Wednesday that the district’s multi‑tiered attendance supports are producing measurable short‑term improvements but that chronic absenteeism rose slightly last year.

Associate Superintendent Hanson presented the district’s annual attendance update, citing a long‑term climb in attendance rates and an increase in the district’s “save rate” (students who received a first truancy notification but did not proceed to the next tier). Hanson said conference interventions produced an immediate week‑one improvement, with an observed average improvement of 7.2% for students who had a conference; that rate was about 10% the prior year.

Hanson highlighted a major spike in absences in January 2025 — a blue spike on the district charts — which she said coincided with political events and student walkouts. “That January spike made it very difficult to recover,” she said, noting the difficulty of sustaining gains after one‑time improvements at conferences.

Hanson described the district’s tiered approach: universal school‑level strategies (tier 1), bilingual community liaisons and intervention teams (tier 2), and mental‑health caseworkers and district staff for intensive cases (tier 3). She credited bilingual community liaisons for raising conference engagement and described efforts to unify attendance and intervention records in Schoollytics to enable evaluation of program effectiveness.

Trustees pressed staff on sustainability and next steps. One trustee asked what comes after the immediate conference effect; Hanson replied that the district follows truancy notification with SART and, where necessary, district SARB procedures and that community liaisons’ ongoing relationship work is critical. Hanson said staff are also looking at whether different staffing models or additional trained personnel would improve outcomes: “More caring staff that we can train” and different skill sets could help sustain gains, she said.

Hanson also reported subgroup breakdowns: chronic absenteeism remains highest among Hispanic students (about 28% in Hanson’s slides), with increases among some small subgroups (migrant students +3%, homeless students +5%). She stressed the complexity of the dropout–absenteeism relationship, noting that many dropout students were chronically absent but that most chronically absent students still graduate.

On data tools, Hanson said the district will continue to use School Status for automated notifications while aiming to integrate attendance and intervention logs into Schoollytics to produce a unified, searchable student record and to better measure intervention effectiveness.

What happens next: Hanson said the district will continue to expand outreach by bilingual community liaisons, pursue better data integration to measure intervention impacts, and present a mental‑health and wellness update in the spring.