Nearly a third of the Clark County (Nev.) School District’s 325,081 students could not be contacted the week after spring break and were marked absent from distance learning, new figures submitted to the Nevada Department of Education show.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that 211,438 district students were marked present from April 14-17, either because their teachers had reached them by phone or email or they had made progress on learning activities.
An additional 11,451 students had documented exemptions that limit their ability to engage in distance learning, such as a lack of internet, computer access or transportation to food distribution locations to pick up hard-copy packets.
That means 102,192 students — or more than 31 percent of the total — were unaccounted for during the week.
The district has recently embarked on a new initiative to reach its absent students.
Attendance officers and social workers have been going door to door to students’ homes to conduct wellness checks.
Officers also have been helping families update their contact information. Teachers and administrators have reported that incorrect contact information has been a major reason that missing students could not be reached.
The ACLU of Nevada has called on Gov. Steve Sisolak to address disparate participation in distance learning caused in part by unequal access to technology or assistive tools for students with disabilities.
“The current state of affairs in which remote learning is fully accessible to some students, partially accessible to others, and inaccessible to many, is not only unacceptable, it is unlawful," ACLU of Nevada Executive Director Tod Story said in a statement. "Governor Sisolak must act quickly, decisively, and with every resource at his disposal to ensure Nevada’s students receive the equal educational and privacy rights to which they are entitled."
The Clark County district has distributed about 60,000 Chromebooks to students, and another 200,000 are awaiting processing and deployment.
