School attendance debated as kids show symptoms

Jenny Gold, Tribune News Service

During the pandemic, the rules for school attendance with the sniffles were clear, if a bit draconian: Keep a child home from school at any sign of illness. Since then, school policies have softened significantly. At LA Unified, for example, parents are directed to send their children to school if they have a mild cold or cough. The main symptoms that require keeping a child home are fever of 100.4 and above, vomiting or diarrhea, according to district instructions on "How to Safely Send Your Student to School." But the rules aren't catching on among families. "Parents still keep kids home for a light case of the common cold or some sniffles. And we're beyond that reality," LAUSD Supt. Alberto Carvalho said in an recent interview. Many parents disagree — especially parents of children in kindergarten and transitional kindergarten, who have the highest rates of chronic absenteeism statewide — as well as the germiest hands, snottiest noses and least developed immune systems.

"I honestly wouldn't want to jeopardize his health for the learning," said Dulce Valencia, the mother of a kindergartner at San Fernando Elementary School, whose son has already been out sick two or three days this year. "I know it's their goal to always have their kids in school. But if my child is at risk of getting worse or getting other kids sick, I'm not going to be sending him."

"A lot of parents have whiplash about these recommendations," said Dr. Eric Ball, a pediatrician in Orange County and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics California. During the pandemic, parents were told to test their children for COVID and keep them home for even the sniffles.

"Then all of a sudden, we went back to our old recommendations," Ball said. "So I think that was really confusing to parents."

Young children are sick from eight to 12 times each year, mostly in the winter and fall, and often for a week or two at a time, Ball said. If they stayed home all of those days, they would be out of school a big chunk of the year.

"We have to balance the public health of the classroom with the kids' ability to learn," he said.

The pediatrics academy recommends that unless a child has fever, vomiting, frequent diarrhea or is "not well enough to participate in school," they can attend. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends several other instances in which children should stay home, including "respiratory virus symptoms that are worsening or not improving." Ball said these recommendations are based in part on the fact that by the time a child becomes symptomatic, they've probably already been contagious for a few days and shared their germs far and wide. Keeping them home just to prevent a virus from spreading usually isn't worth it.

For school districts, the policies are intended to keep more kids in the classroom, preventing the learning loss that comes from chronic absenteeism — defined as missing at least 10% of school days. Even in the earliest years of schooling, research has found that chronic absenteeism can have long-term effects on literacy, future educational success and social-emotional development. The policies are also financial. Schools in California are paid based on their average daily attendance; if a child stays home for any reason, including an illness, the district will not be paid for the missed days of school. Across California the number of kindergartners and transitional kindergartners who are chronically absent peaked during the pandemic at 40% in the 2021-22 school year. Although the rate has fallen since then, the problem has been difficult to solve: 26% of California children in transitional kindergarten, called TK, and kindergarten were chronically absent in the 2023-24 school year, the most recent data available. This compares with 16% in 2018-19, according to state data analyzed by the nonpartisan research center PACE.

LA Unified has made chronic absenteeism a top priority in recent years and has lowered the kindergarten rate to 28% in the 2023-24 school year. But it remains high when compared with the 15% of kindergartners who were chronically absent in 2019-20. Los Angeles-based nonprofit Families in Schools, in partnership with the Los Angeles Unified School District, recently held a series of focus groups on chronic absenteeism with Latino parents of kindergartners. Although parents said their child missed school for an array of reasons, most cited illness and chronic health conditions, which they didn't generally associate with a problematic absence.

Could school sick guidance backfire? Thomas Dee, a Stanford University education professor and economist, warns that an overemphasis on telling parents to send their children to school with a cold could backfire. "To me it just seems too narrow and almost tone-deaf, because there's clearly more going on when you see high levels of chronic absenteeism," he said. "I strongly suspect this can't be entirely due to how parents view the respiratory symptoms of their children." Dee said the absence rates are likely to be tied to "norm erosion" as parents got the impression that school attendance was not crucial, after campuses closed during the pandemic. Schools should better assess exactly why parents aren't getting their kids into school, rather than "browbeating" parents about illnesses.

At LAUSD, Valencia received a letter from the district saying that her son has "accumulated absences without an explanation." If she did not submit a note to excuse him within 10 days, the letter said, "the absence will be recorded as unexcused and may lead to your child being classified as a TRUANT."

"It kind of bothers me," Valencia said. "It's not like I'm choosing for him to miss. It's his health. I'm not allowing him to go to school because he's not healthy... I just feel like [L.A. Unified] is concerned for the kids to go to school because otherwise they don't get paid." Sydney Baune, an LAUSD TK teacher, said many parents seem to be embracing the sick day messaging. She sees many children in her class who she thinks would probably be better off at home: "Kids with a lot of green and yellow mucus. We've had kids with active lice in school." Recently, one parent dropped off a sick child, noting that she might have the flu. But after years of messaging about spreading disease, parents are also aware of the risks to others.

"I feel like it is the most inconsiderate thing for other children, for the teachers and for the other parents," said Nicole Berru, the mother of a TK student who attends a Catholic school in Highlaonnd Park that follows LA Unified's health guidelines.

Berru said she still feels "scarred" by her experience during the pandemic.

"We had so many people suffer during that time and so many adjustments we made. I've become so much more health-conscious," she said. "It feels wrong to send my kids when it will expose other kids."