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Twin Rivers' Own Schools Still Have 30.4% Chronic Absenteeism

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT

The first number on Twin Rivers Unified^↗ was too broad.

On the authorizer-total line in California's chronic absenteeism data, Twin Rivers shows 24,528 chronically absent students out of 49,331 eligible students, or 49.7%. But that line blends the district's own schools with authorized charter schools. On the district-operated line, which excludes those authorized charters, Twin Rivers had 7,308 chronically absent students out of 24,033 eligible students in 2024-25. That is 30.4%.

The correction changes the story. Twin Rivers is not a district where half of the students in its own schools were chronically absent in 2024-25. It is a district where nearly one in three students in district-operated schools were chronically absent, still enough to rank seventh among California's 59 districts with at least 20,000 district-operated eligible students.

A crisis, not the old headline

The 30.4% rate is lower than the charter-blended figure, and lower than Twin Rivers' 2021-22 district-operated peak of 48.6%. It is also still 13.2 points higher than the district's 17.2% rate in 2018-19 and 10.9 points above the 2024-25 statewide district-operated rate of 19.5%.

The district-operated trend shows the pandemic spike and the incomplete recovery clearly: 17.2% in 2018-19, 48.6% in 2021-22, 35.8% in 2022-23, 31.7% in 2023-24, and 30.4% in 2024-25. The latest year was an improvement from the peak, but not a return to the pre-pandemic baseline.

That makes the frame narrower and more precise. The district's own schools are not at majority chronic absenteeism. They are still serving more than 7,300 chronically absent students in a single year.

The charter blend

California's absence files include both district-operated and authorizer-total views. In Twin Rivers, the distinction is unusually large. The 2024-25 authorizer-total line counts 49,331 eligible students and 24,528 chronically absent students. The district-operated line counts 24,033 eligible students and 7,308 chronically absent students. The authorized-charter line counts 25,421 eligible students and 17,284 chronically absent students, a 68.0% rate.

That is why the earlier 49.7% headline was not a clean measure of attendance in Twin Rivers' own schools. The district-operated number is the better basis for comparing the schools directly run by Twin Rivers to other districts' own schools.

Who is missing school

Chronic absenteeism means a student was absent for at least 10% of the days they were expected to attend, according to the California Department of Education's chronic absenteeism definition. On that measure, several Twin Rivers student groups remain far above the statewide overall rate.

Black students in Twin Rivers district-operated schools had a 44.4% chronic absenteeism rate in 2024-25. Students experiencing homelessness were at 39.4%. Students with disabilities were at 38.4%. Economically disadvantaged students were at 31.4%, Hispanic students at 31.0%, white students at 27.2%, English learners at 23.1%, and Asian students at 17.6%.

Those numbers do not support the old claim that every subgroup was above 20%. Asian students were below that threshold. But the subgroup table still shows a broad attendance problem, with the highest rates concentrated among Black students, students experiencing homelessness, and students with disabilities.

Still high in Sacramento County

Twin Rivers is not alone in Sacramento County, but it remains high on the district-operated basis.

Sacramento City Unified^↗ was at 25.2% in 2024-25. San Juan Unified^↗ was at 23.9%. Robla Elementary^↗ was at 23.8%. Natomas Unified^↗ was at 22.2%. Elk Grove Unified^↗ was at 19.8%. Folsom-Cordova Unified^↗ was at 12.1%.

Twin Rivers' 30.4% rate was 18.3 points higher than Folsom-Cordova's rate and 5.2 points higher than Sacramento City's rate. Among Sacramento County districts in the file, only Sacramento County Office of Education posted a higher district-operated rate, at 40.1%, on a much smaller 1,279-student eligible enrollment.

What the numbers can and cannot say

The data establish the size, trend, subgroup pattern, and peer ranking of the attendance problem. They do not explain the cause by themselves.

Suggestive context: California funds school districts in part through average daily attendance, so student absences can affect district revenue; the Legislative Analyst's Office describes attendance as part of California's school funding system in its school finance overview. That does not prove a fiscal mechanism inside Twin Rivers, but it explains why chronic absenteeism can matter beyond the academic disruption.

Unresourced: This article does not attribute Twin Rivers' attendance levels to a specific district policy, transportation pattern, housing condition, or intervention strategy. Those claims would require evidence outside the state absence file.

The defensible conclusion is simpler: when authorized charter schools are excluded, Twin Rivers' own schools are not at 49.7% chronic absenteeism. They are at 30.4%, still one of the highest large-district rates in California and still far above the district's pre-pandemic level.

Data source

Analysis based on chronic absenteeism data from the California Department of Education DataQuest downloadable files, school years 2016-17 through 2024-25.

# See: content/ca/2026-07-06-ca-twin-rivers-crisis-analysis.R

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