Los Angeles' top education official went door to door Monday to urge teens to return to school, netting about a dozen students with the effort and drawing attention to a growing problem.
Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Ramon C. Cortines was among 150 staffers and school board members who joined campus employees in the first-time, broad-based initiative, which targeted 10 truancy-plagued middle and high schools. This school year, about 20,000 of the district's 680,000 students have failed to show up as expected, officials said.
Cortines and others who took part in Monday's friendly sweep emphasized that their main goal was to help students, but said another reason was this month's deadline for districts to provide final enrollment figures to the state.
Those numbers, along with daily attendance figures, help determine annual funding allotments.
A continued enrollment decline could mean displaced teachers or even layoffs in a district that already has endured cutbacks resulting in larger classes.
On Monday morning, Cortines, accompanied by two counselors, knocked on the doors of about 10 households in a half-square-mile area north of John C. Fremont High in Florence. At a tan stucco house, the family he sought had moved, but the current resident was impressed when the superintendent introduced himself.
"So, you the man, huh?"
"I'm the man," Cortines replied, striding away as his companions hurried to catch up.
At the next stop, a purple stucco house, a Fremont counselor spotted a pit bull behind the wrought-iron fence. Cortines tried in vain to telephone the family, then spied a teenager peeking out from the backyard.
It was Jose, 19, who asked that his last name not be published.
The young man said his mother was having financial trouble.
"I'm trying to help her," he said. "She has a little store."
The counselors and Cortines said they could work with the teen to arrange a plan for night school, adult school or a part-time schedule. The superintendent did not leave until Jose committed to an appointment to work out a school schedule.
"I promise," said Jose, who is about a year short of the credits needed to graduate.
He was Cortines' only catch, but officials later said that as a result of the sweep, at least 13 students returned to Fremont on Monday to work out plans for returning to school.
