Chino Valley school district decries senior ditch day which cost it $21,000
By Neil Nisperos
Staff WriterMore than 300 seniors from Chino Valley Unified's four main high schools cost the district thousands of dollars when they participated in a spontaneous ditch day.
District officials, already reeling from layoffs of employees and cuts to services because of a predicted $31.5 million budget shortfall, said 353 of the 757 seniors absent on Jan. 11 were unverified or unexcused.
Cost of those ditch day absences, compounded with those excused absences, totaled about $21,340 in lost state funding. In contrast, the 112 senior absences on the day before, most of which were excused, cost the district $3,157.
The lost of funding is crucial for the district whose Board of Education met Thursday night to consider $26 million of cuts, which includes paycuts and layoffs.
"It's important for parents and students to understand that the school and the district's budgets are negatively impacted when students are not in school," said district spokeswoman Julie Gobin. "This impact has an adverse affect on the programs and resource we are able to provide to students."
Student chatter on Facebook indicated the ditch day was related to the unusual occurrence of the date being 1/11/11, officials said. Usually, ditch days take place closer to the end of the school year in June, and students from multiple high schools usually don't coordinate to ditch school on the same day.
"With a declining enrollment trend, naturally our budget goes down, so certainly the senior ditch day that happened didn't help our situation," said Sandra Chen, assistant superintendent of business services at a recent budget meeting. "Every time students don't show up, we're hurting."
The district has also begun a communication campaign to parents and students in order to prevent another mass senior ditch day, which Gobin said may happen regionally, with students at other districts, on April 7 -- or 4/7/11 -- according to Facebook chatter.
"2004 is the year they promoted from elementary to junior high, 2007 is the year they promoted to high school, and 2011 is the year they graduate," Gobin said.
Student leaders from the four high schools attended a regular student advisory committee meeting last Thursday in which district officials discussed the consequences of the ditch day.
Gobin said four Don Lugo High leadership students, Tori Kerber, Brandon DiTommaso, Brett Walker, and Bianca Pezo, were able to relay the message back to their fellow classmates about another ditch day planned Friday.
Only 24 students from Don Lugo ditched school on last Friday, Gobin said.
"What they took back was the message that the senior ditch day significantly impacts education," said Colleen Alton, child welfare and attendance coordinator. "There's a bigger picture here than just having fun. So they got the word out and the kids heeded and paid attention."
Gobin added the district is proud of the students who decided to resist the temptation. Of the 2,250 seniors at Don Lugo, Ayala, Chino and Chino Hills high schools, two thirds, or about 1,440, did attend classes last Tuesday, she said.
"We certainly want to acknowledge they did the right thing and we're hopeful by getting the message out to parents and students we can mitigate the possibility of having a big turnout like this again in April."
neil . nisperos @inlandnewspapers.com, 909-483-9356
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