A supportive mentor can make a world of difference in the life of a struggling child or adolescent and Los Angeles Unified School District seeks to leverage that power to uplift 27,000 of its most vulnerable students.
On Friday morning, Feb. 3, Superintendent Carvalho unveiled LAUSD’s Everyone Mentors, a new initiative to pair disadvantaged students with a role model and cheerleader who can help them realize their own potential and overcome barriers to unlock it.
The program is geared towards the estimated 9,000 students homeless in the district, and chronically absent students, and those with low reading and math proficiency, mental health issues, family instability and food insecurity.
“Every one of these 27,000 kids in our community needs to feel that they are important because of the presence of a valuable and inspirational adult,” said Carvalho at a press conference at Compton Avenue Elementary STEAM Academy.
The goal of the program is to match every student with a personal mentor who they will meet with after school on campus for at least one hour a week.
It is the latest in a series of strategies to address high rates of chronic absenteeism and an estimated 5 years of academic ground that LAUSD students lost during the pandemic.
Last academic year about one-half of the district’s students were chronically absent, meaning they missed at least 10% of their school days. That rate has dipped to a little below 40% this year and a little below 30% when illness-related absences are excluded, Carvalho said, adding that, nevertheless, it remains too high.
The problem is pronounced among students experiencing homelessness, around 70% of whom are chronically absent.
The district has been fighting absenteeism through its “iAttend days” where the superintendent, principals and staff go knocking on the doors of chronically absent students.
The announcement of the Everyone Mentors program took place on the district’s third “iAttend” day, which was…
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