Report: L.A. COVID lockdown crippled school attendance

Sophia FloresAugust 16, 2022

HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 13: An empty classroom is seen at Hollywood High School on August 13, 2020 in Hollywood, California. With over 734,000 enrolled students, the Los Angeles Unified School District is the largest public school system in California and the 2nd largest public school district in the United States. With the advent of COVID-19, blended learning, or combined online and classroom learning, will become the norm for the coming school year. (Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)

HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 13: An empty classroom is seen at Hollywood High School on August 13, 2020 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)

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UPDATED 3:25 PM PT – Tuesday, August 16, 2022

The Los Angeles Unified School District is bringing to light what it is to referring to as a new kind of pandemic- one that involves a lack of children attending school. The low attendance rate is a part of the aftermath of the COVID-19 lockdowns.

In an effort to find the “lost children” Alberto Carvalho, the Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent, and 600 other officials have visited the homes of families with school-aged children in their county.

“There are thousands of kids we thought had left the community, had not enrolled in school. But in fact, in our community, they just disengaged, they disconnected, they fell off the radar,” Carvalho said. “So today we are targeting on a priority basis student who demonstrated a chronic absenteeism last year.”

High school student, Yordi Luna, admitted that he lost motivation to show up for class following the Coronavirus restrictions in California.

“During the pandemic, while there was online school, I hardly showed up,” he said. “Maybe like three days out of the whole year. And during high school, I lost that sense of importance to school, so I stopped showing up.”

The school District Superintendent says it’s imperative that Los Angeles schools get kids like Yordi back into the classroom and that they ensure they finish the year successfully.

First Day of School Preliminary Attendance Data
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Datos Preliminares de Asistencia del Primer Día de Clases pic.twitter.com/xzRZjAke4M

— Alberto M. Carvalho (@LAUSDSup) August 16, 2022

This comes after a poll by Impact Research discovered that 74 million students missed roughly 15 days of school during the first half of the 2021 and 2022 school year.