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Tracking down missing students
The pandemic has students scattered online and home-schooled in some places. The state says there are thousands unaccounted for, but we recently learned that Volusia County has a whole department dedicated to finding these missing kids and then getting them back on track.
DELAND, Fla. - COVID-19 has led to attendance issues at area schools. Volusia County Schools report 78 students unaccounted for -- students who haven’t shown up to class-- while 172 students have been unaccounted for in Lake County.
"We literally have had social workers pounding the pavement and finding families, making sure that our students are learning," said Kelly Schulz, Volusia County Schools spokesperson.
Think of them like investigators searching the county for missing kids, and the pandemic isn’t helping.
"Turns out, the families decided they were going to try and homeschool and that didn’t work for them, so they just kind of disappeared from our radar and we’re pulling a lot of those families back in," said Schulz.
Schulz tells me, virtual learning challenges have caused some families to throw in the towel.
"There are some families that have connectivity issues, where they had spotty service at home and it just wasn’t working out, their student couldn’t log-in," said Schulz.
But a team of nearly 200 in Volusia is making sure those students get back to learning.
"We have 18 social workers and we have clerks and registrars from each of our schools that work together," said Schulz.
Using many tactics to locate the students and find out what’s going on.
Since the start of the year, they’ve managed to get 700 students back to school.
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