EPISD loses potential $3.25 million in state funds over absences, poor attendance reporting

by Claudia Lorena Silva, El Paso Matters
August 13, 2024

The El Paso Independent School District potentially lost about $3.25 million in state funding during the 2023-24 school year over unexcused absences and poor attendance reporting, according to an internal audit of five campuses.

The overwhelming majority of the losses came from Franklin High School, which reported 40,362 unexcused absences – the equivalent of having 13 days with no students attending class. This totaled a loss of about $2.34 million for the district.

Austin High School lost $562,252 with 9,694 absences, Jefferson High School lost $184,724 with 3,186 absences, the Tinajero Pre-K-8 School lost $118,801 with 2,049 absences and Crockett Elementary School lost $38,802 with 669 absences.

These findings come as school districts all over Texas face budgetary woes as they deal with inflation and no increases in per-pupil funding from the state since 2019. EPISD plans to dig into its reserves after it approved a $542 million budget with an $18.5 million deficit for the 2024-25 school year in late June.

With school funding based on attendance, many districts rely on students showing up to school and proper record keeping to maintain their budgets.

EPISD Chief Internal Auditor Mayra G. Martinez will present the audit findings as part of the Annual Report to the Board Audit Committee at 5 p.m. Wednesday at district headquarters.

“The El Paso ISD Board, in collaboration with the administration, initiated an audit to identify any issues affecting student attendance and ensure our systems are as robust as possible. The audit confirmed our concerns and provided us with specific insights into system gaps that need to be addressed,” El Paso ISD chief communications officer Liza Rodriguez said in a statement.

The audit, which covers the period from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, found instances of students’ attendance being reported inaccurately and teachers using invalid handwritten sign-in sheets to take attendance. 

Additionally, several attendance clerks did not complete training and none of the principals for the five campuses audited attended attendance training at the beginning of the school year.

The audit also found several instances of administrators failing to follow up with students who were excessively absent to create a 45-day intervention plan required under Texas law.

House Bill 2398, passed during the 2015 legislative session, requires schools to notify parents once a student has been absent three times and meet with them to help improve the student’s attendance.

The district did not have a timeline for sending absence notifications to parents and no way to track when notices were sent, or monitoring procedures to ensure attendance plans are developed, according to the audit.

Rodriguez, in a statement, said the district had already implemented changes to its attendance procedures before the report was finalized, including hiring additional staff to track and report absences and implementing new systems to streamline the process and accountability. 

She said principals and attendance staff have undergone training to better manage attendance procedures, “and all staff have been educated on how attendance directly impacts funding and student success.”

“We have also enhanced communication efforts with parents, offering multiple ways to report student absences and reinforcing the importance of consistent attendance,” she said in the statement.

Franklin High School absences

Franklin is EPISD’s largest campus with over 3,000 students, according to the Texas Education Agency. That means that on average, each student at Franklin had 13 unexcused absences last year, or about 7% of all class days.

Of the 40,362 unexcused absences Franklin reported, 37,393 did not include a note or call from parents and 2,968 were unverified.

“Parents/guardians receive notification, and they are provided with policy and procedures regarding attendance; however, parents/guardians keep students at home or pick them up without notifying the campus,” Principal Amanda Bowser stated in the audit.

When asked in the audit how the school would prevent these issues from happening again, Bowser said the campus will follow the district’s new attendance procedures developed for the 2024-25 school year.

Franklin also lost four attendance clerks, leaving it with only three people responsible for documenting attendance for the school year, Bowser said in the audit. She is requesting additional staff to help.

This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.