The most significant issue with the strategy of placing social workers in every school is the cost of maintaining the new workplaces. This proposal aims to provide funding by promoting a ballot measure to gain financing via extra gasoline tax and use it to pay the workers. It is also necessary to discuss the logistics of the plan’s implementation, including the details of the workers’ operation.
Funding of the Project
The salary of a social worker is comparable to the salary of a school teacher, and hiring a new teacher for every school is a significant financial endeavor. As such, if the proposal outlined in this paper is to be implemented, a source of financing must be found. This source has to come either from a redirection of an existing finance flow or a recent tax, the beneficiaries of which have not yet been firmly established.
In order to search for a source of funding, the cost of the program has to be established first. The average salary of public school teachers in the State of California amounts to approximately $77,179, according to the California Department of Education (2017). Furthermore, the California Department of Education (2018) states there are 10473 public schools of different levels in the state. If a social worker is to begin working in every school, the rough annual cost estimate is $750 million. While this is a considerable sum, the state of California has recently introduced a new tax that is capable of providing the necessary funding.
The policy in question is the November 2017 increase in the gasoline tax as described by Miller (2017). According to Miller (2017), the tax was primarily intended to help fund various road programs, but it is likely that some part of the income can be diverted to the funding of the proposed plan. The increase is expected to bring in $5.2 billion annually, according to Miller (2017), which is sufficient to cover the proposition’s cost without compromising the original goals, slowing down the road maintenance programs but not impeding them.
Logistics of the Plan
Social workers stationed in schools will mostly work on the micro level, such as counseling for students and parents. The sessions will help discover the reason for a student’s behavior that can then be addressed to the satisfaction of both the family and the school, and the personal approach will help deal with factors such as diversity. Additionally, social workers will work towards eliminating absenteeism and truancy by preventing them entirely through preemptive actions, identifying potential risk factors such as unusual behavior and counseling the troubled students.
On the mezzo level, social workers will change the operating patterns of the schools where they work. Unlike teachers, who do not necessarily have the elimination of truancy as their primary goal, workers will be able to focus on their assigned target. As such, they will be able to understand students’ problems better and minimize the negative impact of skipping on their grades. This may lead to schools becoming a friendlier environment, and students will see the image of the school as a safe place as a reason against truancy.
On the macro level, social workers will be able to collect detailed, accurate data about the common reasons for students to play truant. This information can then be used to determine the primary factors that influence a student’s likelihood of missing school. With the gained knowledge, workers will be able to suggest beneficial changes in laws concerning education or social policy and to push for the creation of statewide initiatives that will address the issues taking place outside of the school environment.
Improvements over Existing Interventions
The current measures that target absenteeism include attendance monitoring, parent and student engagement, and community-based outreach. Good attendance is recognized and rewarded, and students are assigned advisor teachers who provide guidance and visit the homes of those with attendance problems. However, while these interventions provide a positive effect on the attendance and lower truancy and absenteeism, they are insufficient, according to the data below.
While there are no studies investigating California’s attendance rate issues in particular, the problem is prevalent in the entirety of the United States. According to Rasasingham (2015), 10 percent of students in the country miss 21 or more days in a school year without a legitimate reason, and 28 to 35 percent of students display regular absenteeism-related misbehaviors. Furthermore, a large portion of the students with significant amount of absences qualified for a mental disorder diagnosis.
The initiative proposed in the paper does not offer methods radically different to those described above. However, instead of teachers who may see the duty as an extra burden, trained specialists who consider the work they are doing as their primary responsibility will take all the necessary measures. According to Guryan et al. (2017), a social worker-based program has already been attempted in the state of Chicago and showed positive results. As such, the success rate of the utilized measures should increase, improving the image of educational institutions, which in turn may reduce truancy further.
Conclusion
School truancy and absenteeism are a source of significant concern in the United States and California in particular. The measures currently used to combat the issue are unable to achieve the desired results, and so improvements are necessary. This paper offers a system based on hiring a social worker for every school who will provide students with assistance and investigate problem cases. The proposed source of funding is the 2017 gasoline tax increase, which should be able to finance the program without compromising its original goals. The measures suggested in the paper should improve attendance and possibly serve as a basis for further innovations.
References
California Department of Education (2017). Statewide Average Salaries and Expenditure Percentages: 2015–16. Web.
California Department of Education (2018). Fingertip Facts on Education in California – CalEdFacts. Web.
Guryan, J., Christenson, S., Claessens, A., Engel, M., Lai, I., Ludwig, J., & Turner, M. C. (2017). The effect of mentoring on school attendance and academic outcomes: A randomized evaluation of the Check & Connect Program. Web.
Miller, J. (2017). California tax increase is now law. What it costs you and what it fixes. The Sacramento Bee. Web.
Rasasingham, R. (2015). The risk and protective factors of school absenteeism. Open Journal of Psychiatry, 5, 195-203.