Median Household Income and School Attendances

Hello, I’m Israel Jurado a student at Bonita Vista High School. In my storymap I will be show how in areas with higher income there are more excused absences while in areas with lower income there are more unexcused absences. I will also be explaining why this information is useful, how it can be used, how it can help.

Before I start explaining my maps and tell you about them. I would like to explain about how I got my question and what is its intended propuse.

I first came up with my question after watching a student in my geography class walk in late with a Starbucks drink and wondered how many kids are late to school getting Starbucks. So after doing some resecarch and saw that I wasn’t going to be able to map tardy rates I decided that mapping absences and income would be a good idea. An idea that can be used to help other students.

I intend to use this information to bring awareness to parents and student that number of excused and unexcused absence about the effects unexcused absences have. Special since California is one of the seven states that funds schools based on daily attendance rates as states by the PPIC (Public Policy Institute of Califronia). Schools funding and greatly affect the education students get any school in california.

If you click on the dots you will see the name of school, address, numder, and population in attendance area.

The map above shows the high schools and middle schools in Sweetwater Union High School Dstrict (or SUHSD). It also shows the attendance areas and boundaries. The reason I choose the Sweetwater Union High School District schools is not only becasue I attend one of its schools. But also becasue the Sweetwater Union High School District has schools located in both high income areas and low income areas. Making it a great place to map median household income and attendance rates.

The map bellow shows some of the same data as the previous map like the middle schools and high school, the Sweetwater Union High School Dustirct boundaries. But it incorporates a new layer. This new is the median house hold income from the year 2018.

If you click on a shaded area you will see the meadian household income for that areas.

After studying my maps I notice that 10 out of the 24 schools mapped are in areas that have a median income of $95,544 or more. While 14 of the school are in areas that have an median income of $70,316 or less. The Sweetwater Union High School District also has schools in both low income areas and high income areas but some of the high schools corrisonding middle schools are located in areas with different income. Showing that age may not play a role in unexcused attendance rates. A good exmaple to look at on the map is Bontia Vist Middle School and Bonita Vista High School

When you click the grey circles you name of school address, and percentage of student with unexcused absences (the numder at the bottom is in percetnage).

This map shows both median household income and middle schools and high schools just like the previous map. It also now shows the excused absences from the year 2018-2019 in SUHSD. The reason I chose the years 2018-2019 is because that last few years starting on January 20th of 2020 have been crazy and spontaneous due to Covid-19. When Covid-19 hit the US and it not just affect where school took place but who was able to attend school. Now your probably think how could it affect who attends school. But it did because of distance learning many student could not attend school online through our Zoom calls or Google meets due to bad internet connect. Mkaing us missout on entire classes.

As I stated earlier that some of the high schools corrisponding middles schools are loacted in different income areas it could show that age doesn't play a role in excused absences. The reason I am making this claim is because if you look at Bonita Vista Middle School it is located in a higher income area than Bonita Vista High School, and Bonita VIsta Middle School you see that it has a lower excused attendance rate than Bonita VIsta High School. Another example is Rancho del Ray Middle School and Otay Ranch High School, Rancho has more unexcused absense and is in a lower income area than Otay Ranch. Another example is Castle Park Middle School and Castle Park High School, here Castle Park Middle School is in a lower income areas than Castle Park High School and it also has more excused absences.

The next map shows the excused absences in corrilation to household income. For this it is the same as the previuos map the income data layer in form 2018 and the excused absences data layer is from the year 2018-2019

Here you can see that as the household income increase the amount of excused absense also increases. Athough this can be viewed better when you apply the layer of unxcused sbsences to the map.

If you click the dots you will see the name of school, adress, and percentage of excused absences.

In this map you can see that as median house hold income increase the numder of unexcused absences decreases and the numder of excused absences increases. Now are there many theories as why this is. My theory is that simply parents/guardians in high income areas simply call to excuse their student absence more often than parent in lower income areas. Maybe parents in higher income areas are more awear about the effect that can occur when they excuse their students absences,

For example some of the effect might be that the funds the school receive from the goverment decreases. There for badly impacting the education their student recieves. Or it could be that they're awear that if they don't excuse their student absences they migth get saturday school. which could be an incovince for the parents/guardians.

Here is Chula Vista High School if you look around you see that my claim doesn't apple to this school. So when I noticed this, I did some rescreach and found out that Chula Vista has a large amount of after school programs. Some after school programs include SCPA, ASB, The Vault (where student hangout until 5pm play video games, board games, pool talbe, ping pong, and more), Gardening, Driver ED, Impov, K-Pop Choregraphy, Amine, and more. As sates by the Chula Vista Highs Website. This is why I thoerize that this large amount of programs could lead to an increase of excused absences in Chula Vista High School and some other schools in my district. By incouraging student to tell their parents/guardians to excused their absences.

With my map I would like to bring awearness to all school districts that they should encourage parents/guardians to excuse their students adsneces, becasue these unexcused absenes is affecting the funds their school recieve and the education of their students. I would also like to bring awearness to parents/guardians that they should call and excuse their childerns absences becasue the unexcuse abences is limiting the education their students get. In the end these unexcuse and excuse absences affect out education us the student so I strongly incourage fellow student to tel your parents/guardians to excuse your absence becasue it affect our education.

So in conculsion, schools in lower income areas tend to have less excused absences than unexcused.

Thank you for read.