The Honorable Judge Brian Hill Presiding Judge of the Superior Court of Santa Barbara County

During the last two years 2006-7 and 2007-8 of the District Attorney sponsored SARB process of Santa Barbara County, the SMJUHSD had an effective truancy rate of39.7 percent.

During the last tow years, 2009-10 and 2010-11, without the SARB process SMJUHSD has had an effective truancy rate of 81.5 percent, slightly more than twice as high. There can be many assumptions made about this dramatic increase, including among other things, changes to the data gathering process and requirement, the migratory nature of our student population, size of the district population, state of the overall economy, state of the local economy, etc. However, we can confidently state that truancy continues to be a problem for our district, and that the problem is increased over the years in spite of local efforts to combat it.

With a 40% increase in the effective truancy rates in the last 4 years, we can state with a high degree of certainty that the loss of revenue to the district is significant. More on this in