Sacramento County's District-Operated Chronic Absenteeism Reaches 21.9% in 2024-25

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Sacramento County spans from the foothills of Folsom and El Dorado Hills to the agricultural flatlands of the Delta, with the state capital and its surrounding suburbs in between. Across the county's district-operated schools, about 216,000 students were enrolled in 2024-25.

In that year, 47,356 of those students, or 21.9%, were chronically absent. That is about 2.4 points above the statewide district-operated rate of 19.5%, and 8.4 points above the county's pre-COVID baseline of 13.5%. The rate is elevated, and it has come down slowly. It is not, on a district-operated basis, the worst among California's large counties.

These figures cover district-operated schools only. They exclude independent-study and online charter schools, which California reports under their authorizing county or district code and which carry very high chronic-absence rates under seat-time accounting. Blending those charters into the county total pushes the figure several points higher and obscures what is happening in the brick-and-mortar schools most families attend.

A slow recovery from a high peak

Sacramento County's chronic-absence rate sat near 13% before the pandemic, rose to 34.2% in 2021-22, and has fallen each year since: to 27.1% in 2022-23 and to 21.9% in 2024-25. The decline is real, but the county remains well above where it started. The 8.4-point gap between the current rate and the 2019 baseline is the clearest measure of how much ground is left to recover.

How Sacramento compares to other large counties

Among California's 13 counties with at least 100,000 district-operated students, Sacramento ranks sixth by the size of its increase above the pre-COVID baseline.

San Bernardino leads with an increase of 11.2 points, followed by Riverside (10.3), Fresno (9.5), San Joaquin (9.4), and Ventura (8.6). Sacramento's 8.4-point increase places it just behind that group and ahead of San Diego (7.6), Contra Costa (7.5), and Kern (6.9). Los Angeles County, with by far the most students, saw a 6.4-point increase.

Measured by the level of the 2024-25 rate rather than the change, Sacramento ranks fifth among the large counties, behind San Bernardino (24.5%), San Joaquin (23.6%), Riverside (23.2%), and Fresno (22.0%). The picture is consistent: Sacramento is elevated and slow to recover, sitting in the upper-middle of the state's large counties rather than at the extreme.

A wide gap between districts

Sacramento County's rate is not distributed evenly. The county's largest districts span a wide range, and a student's likelihood of being chronically absent depends substantially on which district boundary they live inside.

Twin Rivers Unified^↗, which serves North Highlands, Rio Linda, and Del Paso Heights, carried the highest rate among the county's large districts at 30.4%, with about 24,000 students. Sacramento City Unified^↗ was at 25.2% with about 38,000 students. San Juan Unified^↗ (23.9%, about 41,000 students) and Elk Grove Unified^↗ (19.8%, about 65,000 students) sat nearer the state average. Folsom-Cordova^↗ (12.1%, about 22,000 students) operated in a different attendance reality entirely.

The gap between Twin Rivers at 30.4% and Folsom-Cordova at 12.1% is about 18 points, within a single county. Smaller districts in north Sacramento show similar pressure: Robla Elementary^↗, a roughly 2,000-student district, was at 23.8%.

The north Sacramento concentration

The higher rates cluster in the communities north of downtown Sacramento. Twin Rivers and Robla both serve areas with some of the lowest median incomes in the Sacramento metropolitan area, higher rates of housing instability, and limited transit connections to the jobs that have concentrated in the Roseville and Folsom corridor to the northeast.

The contrast with Folsom-Cordova, with its higher incomes, newer housing stock, and stronger transportation infrastructure, illustrates how geography and socioeconomic conditions shape attendance outcomes more than any single school policy.

Every district is still above 2019

The county-wide gap reflects broad-based change, not a single outlier. Each of the county's large districts is above its own pre-COVID rate. Twin Rivers rose from 17.2% in 2019 to 30.4%. Sacramento City rose from 17.2% to 25.2%. San Juan rose from 14.8% to 23.9%. Elk Grove rose from 10.4% to 19.8%. Even Folsom-Cordova, the lowest, rose from 9.3% to 12.1%.

That pattern matters for where recovery has to happen. Bringing the county back toward its pre-COVID rate will require progress across districts, not improvement in one place alone. The districts serving north Sacramento have the most ground to make up, but the elevated rates reach into suburban and higher-income communities as well.

Data source

Analysis based on chronic absenteeism data from the California Department of Education DataQuest, school years 2016-17 through 2024-25 (2019-20 omitted; statewide reporting was suspended during the pandemic). County-level and district-level data. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing 10% or more of enrolled school days.

County and district rates in this article are reported on a district-operated basis. They exclude authorized independent-study and online charter schools, which California reports under the same county or district code and which carry disproportionately high chronic-absence rates under seat-time rules. Excluding them reflects the brick-and-mortar schools most students attend; blending them in raises the published figures by several points.

# See: content/ca/2026-06-22-ca-sacramento-crisis-analysis.R