Educator presents new way to think about CCUSD's absent students

Among the many issues currently facing the Culver City Unified School District is the Average Daily Attendance and the quest to raise it. Improving Average Daily Attendance is one of the few ways school districts in California can increase year-over-year revenue, and finding ways to improve this metric is among the top goals for District administrators.

Average Daily Attendance is one of the primary factors that determines funding in the Culver City Unified School District, and the cost of chronic absenteeism is substantial. According to data from a joint report by the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education (CBCSE) at the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for the Transformation of Schools at UCLA, the social burden of chronically absent students can equal $5,630 in lost funding, and suspension and expulsions can raise that to as high as $70,870.

Dr. Ivory Toldson is a professor at Howard University who works with Concentric Educational Solutions, a firm focused on reducing chronic absenteeism in school districts nationwide. His paper “Redefining the Attendance Paradigm” examines a new method to address the core issues of chronic absenteeism. This model centers around the idea of replacing punitive measures like criminalizing truancy with a system centered on connection with troubled students.

There is a potential legal framework in Washington, D.C., that could support Dr. Toldson’s idea. He cites the Improving School Attendance Outcomes Amendment Act of 2025, currently under review, as the potential start of a legislative shift in the approach to addressing chronically absent students.

This framework establishes more holistic responses to truancy, repealing requirements for Police Departments to send warning letters to parents of chronically absent students and focusing on establishing systems to provide wraparound services to vulnerable student populations. It represents a significant shift in the perception of chronic absenteeism and its root causes, Dr. Toldson argues.

“By shifting jurisdiction from child welfare and police agencies (CFSA and MPD) to human services (DHS),” the report reads, “the legislation structurally acknowledges that absenteeism is a social services issue necessitating housing assistance, mental health care, and economic support, rather than a criminal justice issue.”

While Culver City as a community is traditionally seen as a low-poverty area with high real estate prices and median income, CCUSD’s student base tells a different story. Around 32% of students qualify for free or reduced meals, which Dr. Toldson’s report would qualify as a “Moderate Poverty Concentration.” This can deeply impact many aspects of a student’s life at school, and attendance rates are no exception.

“For affluent families, an absence is typically an isolated, manageable event — a sick day buffered by health insurance, flexible parental employment, and reliable transportation,” the report says. “For socioeconomically disadvantaged families, an absence is frequently the result of compounding systemic failures, where a single disruption can trigger a cascading crisis that keeps a child out of school for weeks.”

Chronic absenteeism — particularly for students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds — is still an issue CCUSD is dealing with. While the chronic absenteeism rate for all students dropped from 14.2% in 2022-23 to 10.1% in 2023-24, and then to 8.7% in 2024-25, several socioeconomic groups still have disproportionate absenteeism rates. Chronic absenteeism for long-term English Language Learners went up from 13.6% to 19.4% in 2024-25, and almost 41% of homeless students at CCUSD were chronically absent last school year.

One issue more deeply connected to the Culver City Unified School District is the number of students on permit who live outside of Culver City’s borders. Dr. Toldson did not examine whether students coming to CCUSD from outside the district through permits were more likely to experience chronic absenteeism, but said that the distance between these students and the school could exacerbate the difficulties stemming from one of the most prominent issues facing families: transportation.

According to the report, 80% of school administrators cite bus driver shortages as a major operational hurdle, which can create significant hurdles for students with inconsistent access to a vehicle. Families living outside of school bus service zones far from schools can be even more sensitive to these issues, creating “a foundation of daily instability.”

“For disadvantaged families, a single vehicle breakdown triggers a cascading attendance crisis,” the paper reads. “Parents without financial reserves are forced to rely on cost-prohibitive alternatives like ridesharing services, which are unsustainable over the long term.”

Culver City is looking to address these issues by improving the flow and safety of transit and micromobility traffic, but Dr. Toldson said such improvements can have a minimal effect if the visions of everyone involved are not aligned. While bike lanes can make travel near schools easier and safer, he argued that it will not matter nearly as much if bike lanes and other transportation infrastructure do not align with how members of the chronically absent population live their lives.

“I think that when the city does this type of planning, it is important for them to survey the community,” Dr. Toldson said, “because if they're focusing all these efforts on bike lanes, but the communities that they're trying to get more access to doesn’t have bikes, and biking isn't part of their culture, then they won't get used that much.”

Another key factor in keeping kids in school is supporting their physical and mental well-being. Mental health counselor cuts are on the table because of the lack of revenue at CCUSD, and Dr. Toldson explained that compromised mental and physical health are the most commonly cited factors keeping students out of schools. The paper argues mental health impacts are magnified for LGBTQ+ students, particularly for transgender students.

“Any time you reduce the resources for mental health,” Dr. Toldson said, “I think you can expect to see an impact on the participation in school.”

One of the District’s Local Control and Accountability Plan’s goals focuses on improving connections with a particular disadvantaged group: foster youth. While most data on the District’s foster youth population is withheld due to privacy concerns and a statistically insignificant student body of just five students, data from the 2025-26 LCAP shows a 94.2% attendance rate for foster youth in the 2023-24 school year.

Dr. Toldson is a believer in the power of technology as a tool to help engage students, and one of CCUSD’s LCAP proposals to use an app to engage with the District’s foster youth population caught his attention. These technologies should not facilitate automated actions like robocalls or texts; they should instead be used to supplement the work that school staff is trying to do to stay connected with kids, making their jobs easier.

“It's an important consideration, because we do see a lot of different technological tools being used to address this,” Dr. Toldson said. “But I don’t think that will serve students well to use these technologies as replacements for people.”

Dr. Toldson’s model with Concentric focuses on what he calls the “CARES” Framework. It was developed in the summer of 2024 and is held up by five core pillars:

• Cultural Responsiveness
• Advocacy
• Relationship Building
• Encompassing Support
• Shared Commitment

The core of this framework’s execution is the creation of a Professional Student Advocate position whose role is to connect with students and ensure none fall through the cracks. These advocates do not spend all of their time on campus; much of their day is spent making home visits to students the district “has lost track of” to better understand their specific situation through communication with a family member.

A PSA will relay that information to the District to enable a constructive, tailored response to assist with that student’s particular needs. They can also share information about resources available to the family that are appropriate for addressing their particular needs. While some of the work is about correcting student records, the connections with chronically absent students are the essence of the CARES model.

“It's about helping the students and the families to gather the resources that they need in order to reengage with the school,” Toldson said.

Of course, cost considerations are important, but Dr. Toldson said being open to conversations and accepting of the model are a great first step.

"The first thing to do is to just open up a conversation to see what might be the cost for what you need," Dr. Toldson said.

Click for more on Dr. Ivory Toldson and Concentric.