EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — The El Paso Independent School District’s Internal Audit Report for the 2023-2024 school year shows that student absences in five of its campuses cost them approximately over $3 million in state funds.
EL Paso ISD has 80 campuses in the district and nearly 50,000 students enrolled, according to their website.
According to the report, over $2 million of the costs came from Franklin High School, which had over 40,000 “unverified” or “no note, no call” absences.
The chief internal auditor for EPISD, Mayra G. Martinez, presented the audit report to the district’s Board of Trustees on Wednesday, August 14.
“The reason why the ‘no call’ and the ‘unverified’ are important is because that’s an opportunity. We don’t know why those students are out because we don’t have a note from parents and because for some reason they haven’t been verified. It’s very unlikely that the district would be able to recapture the 3.2 million,” Martinez said.
Meanwhile, EPISD Superintendent Diana Sayavedra said they’re “well positioned” to reconcile the audit’s findings.
The challenge, according to district officials, is that there is not one issue that can be attributed to the trends regarding student absence they have identified across the district.
“It’s difficult for us to determine what our issue is with attendance. Is it the chronic absenteeism or is it the fact that we’ve got systems, structures and protocols that we’re not following?” Sayavedra said during the meeting.
The audit identified several causes that could be factoring in, but during the meeting they discussed at length how “unverified” absences potentially become unexcused, because district clerks fall behind on updating the coding on the absence that may have the documentation to excuse it.
“It could also lead to students receiving notice of absence letters of truancy, that aren’t really truancy,” Martinez explained during the meeting.
At the meeting, district officials discussed how they have been proactive about addressing the issues with student attendance by implementing systems as the audit was being conducted.
One of the key systems they developed will allow parents to visit the district’s website and upload any documents that may prove a student’s absence is excused.
The president of the El Paso Teachers Association, Norma De La Rosa, highlighted that the report does not even take into account the other 75 campuses, and that systems that existed during the COVID -19 pandemic to follow up with parents of students who are missing class, have been abandoned.
“A lot of the systems that used to be in place before COVID are not in place anymore. And if they are, someone’s always finding an excuse as to why it can’t be done or saying ‘no, I don’t have time to do it right now,” De La Rosa said.
According to De La Rosa, the district no longer has truancy officers dedicated to conducting home visits to determine why a student is not in class.
She also said that teachers and district attendance clerks are doing everything they can to reach out to parents of students who are missing class, but that they’re already slammed with other tasks that make it difficult for them to follow up effectively.
“We know teachers are frustrated because they’re told: ‘Well, call home. Find out why the students are not here.’ They try to call home at various times of the day. They’ll call their parents at work. Parents get upset because teachers call them at work to find out why so-and-so isn’t in school. Or a lot of times they don’t get a response back and they have to leave a message,” De La Rosa explained.
District officials said they have departments in place that take on the responsibilities of following up with parents of students who are missing school, such as their “alpha team,” but that identifying when a student missing class becomes a problem has to start with them.
“Academic achievement is our priority. So, we want to make sure that our teachers are supported definitely in the classroom with their students and the curriculum that they’re teaching. But we also are bound to the law and making sure that our teachers are also balancing their responsibilities,” said EPISD assistant superintendent for Student and Parent Services, Lisa Estrada-Batson.
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