By Samuel Strait, Reporter in Large – October 25, 2021 On Monday, October 18th, the Del Norte Unified School District identified 348 additional students missing from schools that they would normally attend, according to Assistant Superintendent of Educations Services, Tom Kissinger. It seems according to Kissinger that there are normally 400 students who miss schools each day or about 12% of the District's student population of about 3500. This would mean the absentee number on Monday was 748 or about 22% of the entire District's student population. Kissinger dismissed the possibility that the high number of absenteeism could be directly traced to the announced State wide protest of Governor Gavin Newsom's pending mandate to vaccinate for Covid all students attending California's public schools by July of 2022. Kissinger went on to say it was difficult to tell definitively whether the protest was responsible for the exceptionally high number of absentees. Oh really…. Nothing to see here folks. In the week before the Monday experience there were a number of indicators that the protest would indeed be coming to Del Norte and the District's administration made efforts to dissuade participation in that event. Clearly the attempt failed. Maybe the message to school administrators to take seriously the level of resistance to the governor's mandate and act accordingly, should be heeded. To say that parents who protest the vaccine mandate should be taking their displeasure to the governor is disingenuous by Superintendent Jeff Harris, when it is already clear that Governor Empty Suit is unable to listen. While the loss of funding may not affect the District's finances immediately, the loss of 22% of the student population in the Fall of 2022 certainly will. Clearly Superintendent, Jeff Harris, didn't get the message following the absentees. His feeble attempt to claim that students were missing out on educational opportunities in addition to a year and a half of a Covid related loss would according to him be a mistake. Apparently Superintendent Harris was unaware of how exposed the school district's lack of worthwhile education was on display during that period. Parents witnessed the abysmal failure of the Del Norte Unified School District's educational practices first hand. Many that care about whether or not their children receive a quality education were appalled. Unfortunately too many parents remain under the mistaken impression that public schools genuinely care about educating their progeny, otherwise the numbers would have been much higher. One might just say "Earth to Superintendent Harris" this is an issue that will not go away quietly in the State of California. If the local school district does not wish further reductions in student population it would behoove the District to lobby Sacramento and our representatives to offer some sort of remedy. To blindly say that small rural school districts have no stake in this coming battle is incredibly naive and disrespectful. There are many other districts that faced the absenteeism through out the State this past Monday. The vaccine mandate coupled with poor performance by many public schools in the State are very likely to have long term affect on public school funding as more parents opt out of public school. This is a small warning of things to come for public schools as the list of grievances mount towards public education which has failed our youth for many years.