Los Angeles Unified School District^↗ET operates 1,386 schools across 710 square miles of Los Angeles County. It is the second-largest school district in the nation, with 528,612 students. In 2024-25, 126,481 of those students -- 23.9% -- were chronically absent.

That total counts every school operating under the LAUSD code, including the independent charter schools the district authorizes. The schools LAUSD runs directly enrolled 381,399 students, of whom 96,925 (25.4%) were chronically absent; the authorized charters add the rest. The district-operated rate is slightly higher than the combined figure because LAUSD's authorized charters post a lower chronic rate (20.7%).

That count is larger than the total enrollment of most American cities' entire school systems. Sacramento City Unified has 44,000 students. Fresno Unified has 73,000. LAUSD has more chronically absent students than either has total students. The scale of the problem creates a kind of administrative invisibility: 126,000 missing students is too large a number to address with phone calls and home visits alone.

Progress, but not enough

LAUSD has improved substantially from its COVID peak. The rate dropped from 36.9% in 2021-22 to 23.9% in 2024-25, a 13-point improvement. The district's iAttend program, which deploys home visits, automated phone calls, and case management for chronically absent students, has been credited with driving progress.

But the current rate of 23.9% remains 5.5 points above the pre-COVID level of 18.4%. And even the 2019 baseline deserves scrutiny -- LAUSD's rate jumped from 11.9% in 2017-18 to 18.4% in 2018-19, a 6.5-point increase in a single year that may reflect changes in how the district recorded absences rather than a genuine deterioration in attendance. If the 2018 rate is a more accurate baseline, the district has much further to go.

The racial divide inside LAUSD

Within the district, chronic absenteeism varies dramatically by race.

Black students: 35.6%, or 13,693 chronically absent. Hispanic students: 24.6%, or 95,464. White students: 18.3%, or 9,367. Asian students: 10.1%, or 1,774. Economically disadvantaged students: 26.1%, or 114,618.

The 25.5-point gap between Black and Asian students within the same district -- serving the same calendar, the same bell schedules, the same attendance policies -- illustrates how chronic absenteeism concentrates along lines of race and poverty even within a single system.

126,000 in context

The chronic absent count peaked at 207,620 in 2021-22 and has fallen by 81,139 since. That reduction represents real progress. But 126,481 students is still more chronically absent students than LAUSD had in 2018 (75,426) or even 2019 (113,784).

The fiscal implications under California's ADA-based funding model are substantial. LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has described the attendance challenge as the district's top priority, and the district has invested in dedicated attendance counselors, partnership with community health organizations, and a data dashboard that flags students approaching the chronic threshold.

Whether these interventions can reduce the count below 100,000 -- roughly the 2019 level -- depends on whether the district can address the structural barriers that keep 126,000 students from attending regularly: housing instability in South Los Angeles, transportation across a sprawling geography, and the mental health challenges that disproportionately affect adolescents.

What LAUSD means for California

LAUSD alone accounts for roughly 11% of all chronically absent students in California. Any statewide improvement strategy that does not move the needle in LAUSD will struggle to move the state average. Conversely, a 5-point improvement in LAUSD's chronic rate would remove approximately 26,000 students from the chronically absent count -- more than many entire states' chronic absent populations.

The district's experience also illustrates the limits of school-level intervention at scale. iAttend has been successful in some schools. But 1,386 campuses stretched across 710 square miles of Los Angeles, from the San Fernando Valley to Watts, from the Pacific Palisades to East L.A. -- that is not a district that can be fixed with a single program. It is a small state within a state, and its 126,000 chronically absent students live in it.

Data source

Analysis based on chronic absenteeism data from the California Department of Education DataQuest, school years 2016-17 through 2024-25. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing 10% or more of enrolled school days. The headline figure of 126,481 reflects all schools reported under the LAUSD code, including district-authorized independent charter schools; the district-operated figure, which excludes those charters, is 96,925 chronically absent of 381,399 students (25.4%). A June 2026 update added this district-operated breakout for clarity.

# See: content/ca/2026-06-01-ca-lausd-scale-analysis.R