A supportive mentor can make a world of difference in the life of a struggling child or adolescent and Los Angeles Unified School District seeks to leverage that power to uplift 27,000 of its most vulnerable students.
On Friday morning, Feb. 3, Superintendent Carvalho unveiled LAUSD’s Everyone Mentors, a new initiative to pair disadvantaged students with a role model and cheerleader who can help them realize their own potential and overcome barriers to unlock it.
The program is geared towards the estimated 9,000 students homeless in the district, and chronically absent students, and those with low reading and math proficiency, mental health issues, family instability and food insecurity.
“Every one of these 27,000 kids in our community needs to feel that they are important because of the presence of a valuable and inspirational adult,” said Carvalho at a press conference at Compton Avenue Elementary STEAM Academy.
The goal of the program is to match every student with a personal mentor who they will meet with after school on campus for at least one hour a week.
It is the latest in a series of strategies to address high rates of chronic absenteeism and an estimated 5 years of academic ground that LAUSD students lost during the pandemic.
Last academic year about one-half of the district’s students were chronically absent, meaning they missed at least 10% of their school days. That rate has dipped to a little below 40% this year and a little below 30% when illness-related absences are excluded, Carvalho said, adding that, nevertheless, it remains too high.
The problem is pronounced among students experiencing homelessness, around 70% of whom are chronically absent.
The district has been fighting absenteeism through its “iAttend days” where the superintendent, principals and staff go knocking on the doors of chronically absent students.
The announcement of the Everyone Mentors program took place on the district’s third “iAttend” day, which was specifically geared toward homeless students. On Friday, district staff stopped at 30 family homeless shelters to visit chronically absent students and sign up unregistered children for school.
The new mentorship program was inspired in part by Superintendent Carvalho’s own experience with homelessness.
“At 17 I was homeless. I slept under the bridge. I felt threatened,” he said. “There are children who are far younger than I was, and close to 40 years later they’re experiencing the same tragic existence.”
Despite the adversity he faced as a homeless student, he went on to become the only one of his siblings to graduate from high school – an accomplishment he attributes, in no small part, to ongoing support from his former 4th grade teacher.
“What she did beyond the classroom with me changed my life,” Carvalho said. “I got to graduate high school while my other brothers and sister didn’t. Something clicked because someone cared about me.”
The LAUSD program was also inspired by the proven effectiveness of mentorship programs on students’ well-being and academic success.
“Research says attendance improves, reading and math performance improve, behavioral issues decrease,” Carvalho said, referring to the results of mentoring.
The district has already identified 12 community partners who will help administer the new program on school campuses, including Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles, Brotherhood Crusade and Good City Mentors. And the district has already kicked off the program by pairing 500 students with district employees.
In addition, anyone in the community can apply to become a mentor as long as they clear a background and criminal record check and meet the criteria of the partner organizations.
“Students who have access to a mentor demonstrate an improvement in self-worth and confidence, stronger mental health and well-being, increased social capital, avoidance of risky behaviors, improvement in academic performance, an increase in connectedness to their families and their communities — and the list goes on and on,” said Jerome Powell, a mentor with Big Brother Big Sister Los Angeles at Friday’s press conference.
What takes place during a mentorship session will be determined by the students’ individual needs.
These sessions are meant to be a bright and happy outlet for students to play, express themselves and open up about challenges they are facing. They are not intended to be a place for more school work and will take place separately from after school tutoring programs.
“What these mentors will do is whatever it is that a youngster needs to feel honored, to feel valued, to feel loved,” said LAUSD Board President Jackie Goldberg. “There’s really no better medicine that I can think of.”
The school district is also trying to eliminate barriers to attending after school mentoring sessions and will be providing a special bus service at 100 of the district’s poorest schools to deliver children safely home, Carvalho said.
The new evening buses also serve students who participate in after school tutoring. The special buses launched earlier this semester in an effort to increase tutoring attendance, by ensuring that students have a safe passage home after the programs.