When the fires compromised the air quality a couple weeks ago, our school was canceled for a day. I recall someone mentioning the school district facing a loss due to no attendance that day. I previously heard that public schools get paid for the attendance of their students. After some additional research, I discovered that California spends an average of $11,000 per student each year. With a district of 4,300 students shutting down even for a day, the district suddenly loses quite a bit of revenue.
Students often complain about not having certain days of school off. However, when we consider the impact of missing days of schools, we can see the financial incentive to have as much student attendance as possible. While we see a 3 day weekend as a chance to relax, the district has to face some heavy losses.
This can be further related to the emphasis on attendance at our school. If you are constantly absent, you will receive punishments such as Saturday school. These are to incentivize someone to show up to class, as they would not want to face such punishment. In college, for the most part, no one cares whether or not you actually go to class or not. This is because the school already has been paid, and is not going to directly benefit from you being in class.
It's interesting to see so much economics behind matters like school attendance. After taking this into consideration, I will definitely appreciate our days off more, as the school is sacrificing a massive opportunity cost in order to satisfy us, students.
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Interesting post! I think that especially with the example of recent fires, it is important to think about the opportunity costs of going to school as well. By going to school when there were fires, we would have missed out on a day away from smoke and polluted air. Going to school would have increased our exposure, which could cause significant health issues for many in the near or far future, but it also could be not that big of a concern. The school, when making the decision of whether or not to cancel school, had to weigh the options of losing one day's worth of revenue or potentially contributing to harmful health concerns for many students.
ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting. I really like the final comparison between high school attendance and collegiate attendance. This brings up the question, is our high school's incentive attendance preparing high schoolers for college? If one has been "forced" to attend school throughout their educational career they may not have learned the real value in showing up to class: learning the material. Subsequently, when they go to college they may skip class and end up facing negative effects: poor grades and lack of preparation for their career.
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