4,000 Newport Students Absent Monday

Newport-Mesa schools were officially back in session Monday, a federal holiday, but nearly 4,000 students stayed home, officials said Tuesday.

School district officials blamed a scheduling error and the teachers' union for Newport-Mesa's failure to observe the holiday.

NMUSD spokeswoman Laura Boss said the academic calendar was approved three years ago, but when officials realized the error 13 months ago, they asked employees' unions to convert the date to a non-classroom day. The district's calendar committee and classified employees union OK'd the switch, but leaders of the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers declined, Boss said.

"The District was in support of yesterday being observed as a non-school day and legal holiday," Boss said in a released statement. "Unfortunately, we could not make it happen among all vested parties. ... Different priorities existed among the representative groups and they made decisions that they felt were in the best interest of their members."

Attempts to reach a union rep for comment were unsuccessful Tuesday.

Tentative estimates released Monday afternoon showed absences for 2,746 elementary students, 886 high schoolers and 194 middle-schoolers. That translates to an overall absence rate of nearly 1 out of 5 students.

Boss didn't immediately respond to questions about how Monday's absence rate compares with normal figures for the first day after winter break.

Final numbers were expected to be released Wednesday.

"It infuriates me that kids had to be there," school board member Karen Yelsey said. "We should be servicing the kids and their parents. Going forward in negotiations, we will make more of an effort to make sure things like this don’t happen again. It makes it look like none of us knew what we were doing, but it was just out of our control."

Parent Mary Hughes said she appreciated the district acknowleding the mixup, but was miffed about the holiday break being cut short.

"I just don't understand why our kids had to pay for something that was obviously a mistake," Hughes said. "So many of [my son's] cousins in other cities had the day off."

District officials said parents were notified in advance that Monday was a school day and all N-MUSD administrators reported to work on the federal holiday.