School threats lead to drop in student attendance at El Paso schools

Following a wave of threats against El Paso high schools last week, this week local school districts saw a decline in student attendance.

El Paso police have arrested those responsible for making those threats on social media, but that still wasn’t enough to reassure parents that it was safe to send their child to school.

This week student attendance at two El Paso school districts declined.

The Ysleta School District, which sees an average attendance of 96%, this week saw that number drop to the lower 90’s.

The Socorro School District saw its student attendance drop to 89%, last week it was at 95%.

Attendance numbers from the El Paso School District weren’t made available to ABC-7 by Friday night’s deadline.

One of the schools threatened on social media was Bel Air High School.

Monday its attendance was at 67%, but on Thursday Bel Air’s attendance was back up at 95%.

District officials say if parents did keep their child from going to school this week because of the threats, those absences could be marked as excused.

Maribel Macias, an Assistant Superintendent with SISD, said the administration will work with parents.

“They (parents) send a letter of why their child was not present with us and then it is excused.” Macias said.

The same is being done at YISD.

Pat O’Neill, the Superintendent of Operations at YISD says the district will review the absences on a school by school basis.

“If a school did receive a threat there will be no penalty,” O’Neill said. “But if it was a school that wasn’t threatened the principal will work with those families. We’re not going to penalize the children, the children will be taken care of.”

Texas school districts receive about $9,000 per student.

YISD and SISD officials say they are in process of submitting waivers to the TEA in order to recoup some of the money lost due to the absences.

The TEA tells ABC-7 that they review all waivers on a case by case basis.