LOS ANGELES — Actor Steve Carell is sending Southern California high school students affected by the devasting wildfires in Los Angeles to the prom for free.

The “Office” actor and comedian said Tuesday in an Instagram video that he was working with the Alice’s Kids charity to pay for prom for seniors at six high schools in Pasadena.

“If you have already paid for your prom tickets, they will reimburse you for your prom tickets. It’s a pretty good deal,” Carell said.

The Los Angeles area fires destroyed more than 16,000 homes, businesses and other structures and killed at least 29 people in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood and Altadena area north of Pasadena. It also scorched school campuses, upending the lives of thousands of students and parents who were left scrambling looking for classrooms for their kids to go to.

Alice’s Kids will donate about $175,000 for more than 800 students to attend the annual right-of-passage dance for graduating students. Tickets typically range from $100 to $150 each.

“Going to prom should be a celebration, and we wanted to help make the big night just a little easier for seniors whose lives have been turned upside down by the wildfires,” Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of Alice’s Kids, said in a statement. “Hopefully this allows the students to unwind and have some fun after a devasting year.”

An Instagram video posted by John Muir High School, one of the recipient schools, show students clapping and cheering as they were surprised with Carell’s announcement during a school assembly.

Another recipient includes Aveson Charter School, whose campus for kindergarten through 5th grade students burned down in the fires and building for sixth through 12th graders is damaged and unusable.

Carell also participated in the star-studded “Skate for LA Strong” hockey tournament last week to raise money for fire relief.

In closing, the actor said: “Have fun, enjoy the prom. And remember, this is Steve Carell.”

SEATTLE — A federal judge who already questioned the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order is set to hear arguments Thursday over a longer-term pause of the directive, which aims to end citizenship for children born to parents not legally in the country.

U.S. District Judge John Coughenour in Seattle has scheduled a hearing involving lawyers from the Trump administration, four states suing to stop the order, and an immigrant rights organization, which is challenging it on behalf of a proposed class of expectant parents.

The latest proceeding comes just a day after a Maryland federal judge issued a nationwide pause in a separate but similar case involving immigrants’ rights groups and pregnant women whose soon-to-born children could be affected.

Here’s a closer look at where things stand on the president’s birthright citizenship order.

The president’s executive order seeks to end the automatic grant of citizenship to children born on U.S. soil to parents who are in the country illegally or who are here on a temporary, but lawful, basis such as those on student or tourist visas.

For now, though, it’s on hold. Two weeks ago, Coughenour called the order “blatantly unconstitutional” and issued a 14-day temporary restraining order blocking its implementation. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman followed that up with an injunction keeping it on hold long-term, until the merits of the case are resolved, barring a successful appeal by the Trump administration.

Asked by Boardman if the administration would appeal, an attorney for the administration said he didn’t immediately have the authority to make that decision.

On Thursday, the birthright citizenship issue is back before Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee. During a hearing last month, he said the case stood out in his more than four decades as a federal judge. “I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear as this one is,” he told a Justice Department attorney.

His temporary order blocking the executive action was set to expire Thursday when he’ll hear arguments over whether he should issue an injunction similar to the one issued by the judge in Maryland.

In total, 22 states, as well as other organizations, have sued to try to stop the executive action.

The matter before the Seattle judge Thursday involves four states: Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and Washington. It also has been consolidated with a lawsuit brought by the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. Eighteen states, led by Iowa, have filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief supporting the Trump administration’s position in the case.

Yet another hearing is set for Friday in a Massachusetts court. That case involves a different group of 18 states challenging the order, including New Jersey, which is the lead plaintiff.

At the heart of the lawsuits is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War and the infamous Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, which held Scott, an enslaved man, wasn’t a citizen despite having lived in a state where slavery was outlawed.

The plaintiffs argue the amendment, which holds that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” are indisputably citizens.

The Trump administration has asserted that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.

“The Constitution does not harbor a windfall clause granting American citizenship to … the children of those who have circumvented (or outright defied) federal immigration laws,” the government argued in reply to the Maryland plaintiffs’ suit.

Attorneys for the states have argued that it certainly does — and that has been recognized since the amendment’s adoption, notably in an 1898 U.S. Supreme Court decision. That decision, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, held that the only children who did not automatically receive U.S. citizenship upon being born on U.S. soil were children of diplomats, who have allegiance to another government; enemies present in the U.S. during hostile occupation; those born on foreign ships; and those born to members of sovereign Native American tribes.

The U.S. is among about 30 countries where birthright citizenship — the principle of jus soli or “right of the soil” — is applied. Most are in the Americas, and Canada and Mexico are among them.

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Catalini is based in Trenton, New Jersey. Associated Press writer Michael Kunzelman contributed from Greenbelt, Maryland.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas’ Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom have little in common ideologically, but the two have both been vocal supporters of an idea that’s been rapidly gaining bipartisan ground in the states: Students’ cellphones need to be banned during the school day.

At least eight states have enacted such bans over the past two years, and proposals are being considered in several more states this year.

Here is a look at the push by states for such bans.

The push for cellphone bans has been driven by concerns about the impact screen time has on children’s mental health and complaints from teachers that cellphones have become a constant distraction in the classroom.

Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, who has called on Congress to require warning labels on social media platforms about their effects on young people’s lives, has said schools need to provide phone-free times.

Nationally, 77% of U.S. schools say they prohibit cellphones at school for non-academic use, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But that number is misleading. It does not mean students are following those bans or all those schools are enforcing them.

Kim Whitman, co-founder of the Phone Free Schools Movement, said the issue is catching on because parents and teachers in both red and blue states are struggling with the consequences of kids on mobile devices.

“It doesn’t matter if you live in a big city or a rural town, urban or suburban, all children are struggling and need that seven-hour break from the pressures of phones and social media during the school day,” she said.

At least eight states — California, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina and Virginia — have enacted measures banning or restricting students’ use of cellphones in schools.

The policies range widely. Florida was the first state to crack down on phones in school, passing a 2023 law that requires all public schools to ban cellphone use during class time and block access to social media on district Wi-Fi.

A 2024 California law requires the state’s nearly 1,000 school districts to create their own cellphone policies by July 2026.

Several other states haven’t banned phones, but have encouraged school districts to enact such restrictions or have provided funding to store phones during the day.

Sanders announced a pilot program last year providing grants to schools that adopt phone-free policies, and more than 100 schools signed on. In her state of the state address this week, Sanders proposed an outright ban.

“We will ban cellphones in our schools, bell to bell, so that our kids are not distracted, in class or out of it,” Sanders said.

Other governors recently calling for bans include Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, who was sworn in this month, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has suggested she’ll seek a statewide policy, but has not offered specifics.

The cellphone bans have faced opposition from some parents who say they need to be able to contact their children directly in case of emergency.

Some parents have pointed to recent school shootings where having access to cellphones was the only way some students were able to communicate with loved ones for what they thought might be the last time.

But supporters of the bans have noted that students’ phones could pose additional dangers during an emergency by distracting students or by revealing their location during an active shooter situation.

Parents opposed to the ban have also said they want their children to have access to their phones for other needs, such as coordinating transportation.

Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, said she agrees about the dangers of social media on children but that the bans sought by states are taking too broad of an approach. Banning the devices during the school day is not going to solve underlying issues like bullying or the dangers of social media, she said.

“We have not done our job as grown-ups to try to teach our kids the skills they need to actually navigate this technology,” she said. “We’ve just kicked the can down the road and thrown them into the deep end of the pool when they’re by themselves after school.”

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Associated Press writers Hannah Fingerhut, Margery Beck, Holly Ramer and Anthony Izaguire contributed to this report.

Emergency crews arrived to a chaotic and gruesome scene in a Honolulu neighborhood after a large New Year’s firework tipped over after being lit and ignited a fiery, shrapnel-studded blast that killed three people and injured more than 20 others, several of them critically.

Two women died at the scene and a third woman died at a hospital, authorities said Wednesday as they implored people to abandon their New Year’s tradition of setting off fireworks across the city. Officials promised tougher penalties for illegal fireworks.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green graphically described the deaths in a news conference Wednesday to emphasize the potential danger of fireworks. “We’re talking about the worst possible, war-zone injuries that took their lives.”

Some of the more than 20 people taken to hospitals with severe burns and shrapnel wounds included children, said officials who had not yet publicly identified any victims including those killed.

Police were investigating whether charges for the person who lit the firework near midnight were warranted, Honolulu Police Chief Arthur Logan said.

The blast happened at a three-story home with a bottom-level carport. Piles of debris including bundles of blackened firework mortars could be seen in front of the house in Wednesday’s daylight.

The explosion broke windows across the street. It happened when a lit bundle of aerial, mortar-style fireworks called a “cake” tipped over or fell off a table and fired sideways into crates containing additional fireworks, which then exploded.

The cake’s rounds could be separated but had been lit as a bundle of 50, part of what officials said was tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of fireworks at the home.

Ambulance crews arrived but had to triage — separate and treat victims with the worst injuries first — several houses away because of parked cars and crowds on the streets, Honolulu Emergency Services Department Director Dr. Jim Ireland said.

Some people nearby continued setting off fireworks even as blast victims were being taken to hospitals, officials said.

The neighborhood is near Honolulu’s international airport and a joint U.S. Air Force and Navy base and a little more than 2 miles (3.22 kilometers) east of the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, which honors sailors who died in the attack on Pearl Harbor that drew the U.S. into World War II.

“I’ve been in EMS over 30 years and this is probably one of the worst calls I’ve ever been on as far as the immense tragedy and amount of patients and severity of the injuries,” Ireland said in an earlier news conference.

A fourth person was killed in a different fireworks explosion elsewhere on Oahu, officials said. At least four other serious injuries occurred in unrelated fireworks accidents overnight.

Social media posts overnight showed fireworks being set off across wide areas of Honolulu even though sparklers, fountains and aerial fireworks are illegal and a permit is required to set off firecrackers, according to the Honolulu Fire Department.

“We’re angry, frustrated and deeply saddened at this unnecessary loss of life and suffering. It’s a tragic way to start the new year,” Mayor Rick Blangiardi said. “No one should have to endure such pain due to a reckless and illegal activity.”

Green said he was looking into whether new penalties including a felony charge for possessing large fireworks are needed to curtail fireworks in Hawaii.

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Gruver reported from Cheyenne, Wyoming. John Hanna contributed to this report from Topeka, Kansas.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Taylor Cagnacci moved from California to Tennessee with hopes of starting a new chapter in a state that touts a low cost of living and natural beauty.

But she’s infuriated by Tennessee’s meager social services, which leave her and many other moms struggling in a state where abortion is banned with limited exceptions.

“I was going to have my child no matter what, but for other women, that’s kind of a crappy situation that they put you in,” said Cagnacci, a 29-year-old Kingsport mom who relies on Medicaid and a federally funded nutrition program. “You have to have your child. But where’s the assistance afterward?”

Tennessee has a porous safety net for mothers and young children, recent research and an analysis by The Associated Press found. It’s unknown how many women in the state have given birth because they didn’t have access to abortion, but it is clear that from the time a Tennessee woman gets pregnant, she faces greater obstacles to a healthy pregnancy, a healthy child and a financially stable family than the average American mom.

Like other states with strict abortion bans, Tennesseans of childbearing age are more likely to live in maternal care deserts and face overall doctor shortages. Women, infants and children are less likely to be enrolled in a government nutrition program known as WIC. And Tennessee is one of only 10 states that hasn’t expanded Medicaid to a greater share of low-income families.

“It’s survival, every day,” said Janie Busbee, founder of Mother to Mother, a Nashville-based nonprofit providing baby supplies for low-income moms. “If we took some of that stress off of them, then maybe they’d have time to dream.”

GOP state leaders in Tennessee and other states that banned abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 argue that they are bolstering services for families.

Tennessee boosted its Medicaid coverage for mothers in 2022 from 60 days postpartum to a year, which allowed an additional 3,000 moms to use the program each year.

The state also raised the Medicaid income limit for parents to the poverty level — nearly $26,000 for a family of three — and offers recipients 100 free diapers a month for babies under two. According to the governor’s office, these changes have resulted in thousands of new parents accessing government services.

“Pro-life is much more than defending the lives of the unborn,” Republican Gov. Bill Lee said in his 2023 annual address to lawmakers and echoed more recently on social media. “This is not a matter of politics. This is about human dignity.”

Yet, nonprofit leaders and mothers told the AP there are still significant gaps in the safety net.

Anika Chillis, a 39-year-old single mom in Memphis, has Medicaid, WIC and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as food stamps). While she’s deeply grateful for the help, she said it also can disappear — like when she temporarily lost WIC.

“It’s hard,” she said, sitting on a park bench as her 2-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter played nearby. “Groceries are constantly going up.” And being a single mom “makes it doubly hard on you.”

Tennessee fared poorly at WIC enrollment, Medicaid, having enough maternal care and requirements for paid family and medical leave, an October study found.

Other states with similarly restrictive abortion laws — such as Idaho, Alabama, Missouri, Georgia and Mississippi — ranked poorly on numerous measures, too. Researchers said restrictive states had a slightly higher average birth rate and a much lower average abortion rate than the least restrictive states.

“In general, these states that restrict abortion are the more fiscally conservative, the more socially conservative states,” said Dr. Nigel Madden, lead author of the study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

The Republican supermajority in the Tennessee legislature has long rebuffed efforts to expand Medicaid to people earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level — about $35,600 for a family of three. And TennCare faces criticism already, with a federal judge ruling earlier this year that the state unlawfully terminated coverage for thousands of families and had a “lethargic” response to nearly 250,000 children losing coverage because of paperwork problems caused by the state.

DiJuana Davis, 44, was among the plaintiffs. In 2019, the Nashville resident was supposed to have surgery to prevent pregnancy and ease her chronic anemia. Days before the procedure, she was informed her Medicaid coverage had been cut off and the hospital was canceling.

She later found out her renewal paperwork went to the wrong address, an error that left her uninsured for two months — during which she became pregnant and developed preeclampsia. Doctors induced labor to save her life, and her son was born prematurely.

“The system is broken,” she said, “and it needs to be fixed.”

More than 3% of the 83,000 babies born in Tennessee in 2023 had mothers who didn’t receive prenatal care. Only seven states had a higher share, according to an AP analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

After birth, doctor shortages impede ongoing care. Around a third of Tennesseans live in a primary care shortage area — a greater share than in all but 10 other states — according to an AP analysis of data from the Census Bureau and the Health Resources and Services Administration.

Moms described several aid programs as frustrating to navigate. Chillis was on WIC for several months after her son was born, but then went without because of mistake during the renewal process — eventually getting it restored with help from the nonprofit Tennessee Justice Center.

Chillis credits a nonprofit preschool provider with linking her to aid programs in the first place: “I don’t see a lot of advertisements about, you know, how you can join this program or go get this” service, she said. “People just don’t have the knowledge.”

Cagnacci, who is pregnant and has a 1-year-old, said she was on SNAP for a while but missed an appointment and was unclear about the steps after that. The process to get recertified was “such a headache” that she’s going without it.

“I just felt like it was purposely being made difficult so that I would just give up,” she said.

Women with young children in states where abortion is banned or limited to early weeks of pregnancy said it can be tough to get social services there, according to a survey by the health policy research organization KFF. Nearly half said it’s difficult for women in their state to get food stamps, for example, compared with 3 in 10 in states where abortion is generally available.

“People who claim to be pro-life, who advocated for these abortion bans, often suggest that these policies are designed to protect children, women and families,” said Madden, the researcher. But the weakness of the safety net shows “the hypocrisy of that argument.”

Tennessee’s new diaper program shows the deep political divisions surrounding aid programs. The Republican governor described it as an effort to strengthen families while Democratic state Sen. London Lamar said GOP leaders are “trying to put a little bow on an abortion ban.” And GOP state Sen. Mark Pody recently told the right-leaning news website Tennessee Conservative that “it is not the state’s responsibility to have a diaper for every single baby” and floated the possibility of cutting the program.

Of Tennessee’s 2.8 million households, 30% earn above the poverty level but not enough to afford the basic cost of living in their counties, according to a recent report. Often, they don’t qualify for government help.

“Some are working three jobs and still can’t survive,” said Busbee, of Mother to Mother.

A fragmented patchwork of charities can help, but they don’t cover the entire state. The Nashville Diaper Connection, for example, serves 30 counties, working with partners to provide 50 diapers a month, mostly to working families who make a bit too much for Medicaid. Other nonprofits are hindered in helping by government agencies’ income rules. And most charities are constrained by the ebb and flow of donations.

Nonprofit leaders fear their job may get harder with a new administration in Washington and a GOP-controlled Congress. Republicans could seek significant changes to federal assistance programs they’ve long criticized, like Medicaid and food stamps.

“We’ve been through four years of a Trump administration, and the goal under the Trump administration was to cut social services,” said Signe Anderson, the justice center’s senior director of nutrition advocacy. “I’m concerned … for families in Tennessee and across the country.”

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Kruesi reported from Nashville, Tennessee. AP data journalists Kasturi Pananjady and Nicky Forster contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

WASHINGTON — The kids seen by Dolores Mejia around suburban Phoenix have been growing heavier in recent years. Their parents, too, she says.

Mejia, a 75-year-old retiree, says she’s also had her own weight struggles on the scale.

That’s why Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s pledge to “Make America Healthy Again” as he campaigned alongside Donald Trump caught her attention. She liked the questions Kennedy raised about the role of processed foods in America’s obesity epidemic.

“I’m a junk food person,” said Mejia, an ardent Trump supporter. “I started wondering where those extra pounds came from.”

After hearing Kennedy out, she concluded: “We cannot trust the health organizations we’ve trusted for years to tell us that our foods are safe.”

Republicans such as Mejia have embraced Kennedy, whose alliance with the president-elect could make the prominent environmentalist and vaccine skeptic the nation’s top health official next year. Republicans hold an overwhelmingly positive view of Kennedy, with most approving of Trump’s decision to put him in his administration, according to recent polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters in the 2024 presidential election.

But Americans overall are less positive about Kennedy, and there isn’t broad support for some of his views, which include closer scrutiny of vaccines.

If confirmed by the Senate, Kennedy will be charged with leading the Department of Health and Human Services, a $1.7 trillion agency that researches cancer, approves prescription drugs and provides health insurance for roughly half the country.

About 6 in 10 Republicans approve of Kennedy’s appointment to Trump’s Cabinet and only about 1 in 10 disapprove, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in December, while the rest aren’t familiar with him or didn’t have an opinion.

Kennedy’s talk of healthy foods is what captured the attention of Natalie Moralez, a 32-year-old engineer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who identifies as an independent.

She likes his promises to take on powerful companies. And she’s eager to see him challenge the ingredients they use in the food she finds on supermarket shelves.

“Even just buying foods from the grocery store, like what else is in there?” Moralez said. “That’s my main concern, and hopefully he can figure out what the underlying issues are and see if we can do better.”

Kennedy doesn’t fare as well among Americans overall, with about 4 in 10 U.S. adults disapproving and about 3 in 10 approving of his appointment.

Although Kennedy is a member of one of the most powerful Democratic dynasties in the country, most Democrats said they don’t like that he’s been named to Trump’s Cabinet. About 6 in 10 Democrats “strongly disapprove” of the pick, the December poll found. That’s a higher share of disapproval than other high-profile picks such as Pete Hegseth to be defense secretary or Marco Rubio for secretary of state.

Kennedy started his career as an environmental lawyer and won big lawsuits against companies over the chemicals used in weed killers and heavy metal smelters.

But in recent years, he’s attracted a sizable and loyal following over his claims that vaccines, recommended and championed by the nation’s public health agencies, are dangerous. That’s despite decades of research, laboratory testing and real-world use that shows childhood vaccinations have prevented millions of deaths.

“There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,” Kennedy said on a podcast in July 2023. During a Fox News interview the same year, he said he believes a repeatedly discredited idea that vaccines can cause autism. In recent days, Trump has increasingly suggested that the link between autism and vaccines should be studied — although decades of research has already concluded there is no connection between the two.

Trump and Kennedy allies have promised not to take away vaccines, instead saying they oppose government mandates and want to conduct more research on the vaccines.

But about half of voters want the government to be more involved in ensuring children are vaccinated for childhood diseases, according to AP VoteCast.

About one-quarter said the government’s current involvement on this is “about right,” and only about 2 in 10 wanted the government to be less involved. But parents of school-age children were somewhat more likely to support a smaller government role: Roughly 3 in 10 parents of children under 18 wanted the government less involved, compared with about 2 in 10 voters without children under 18.

Among Trump’s voters, about one-third wanted the government less involved in ensuring children are vaccinated for childhood diseases.

A similar share wanted the government more involved, and about 3 in 10 said its involvement was about right. Roughly 4 in 10 Trump voters who are parents of children under 18 said they want the government less involved in ensuring children are vaccinated, while about one-third said they wanted it more involved.

Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them the AP, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.

People who voted in the presidential race this November held divided views on Kennedy, according to AP VoteCast.

Kennedy had dropped out of the presidential race by that point, throwing his support behind Trump, but remained on the ballot in some states.

About 4 in 10 voters had a very or somewhat favorable opinion of Kennedy, and roughly 4 in 10 had a very or somewhat unfavorable view. Slightly more than 1 in 10 did not know enough about Kennedy to have an opinion.

Republican voters — about two-thirds — were more likely to hold a favorable view of Kennedy, much higher than the roughly 2 in 10 Democrats who viewed him positively. Meanwhile, about 7 in 10 Democrats had a negative opinion of Kennedy, with about half saying they had a “very unfavorable” view.

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The AP-NORC poll of 1,251 adults was conducted Dec. 5-9, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

AP VoteCast was a survey of the American electorate conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for Fox News, PBS NewsHour, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press. The survey of more than 120,000 voters was conducted for eight days, concluding as polls closed. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. The survey combines a random sample of registered voters drawn from state voter files; self-identified registered voters using NORC’s probability based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population; and self-identified registered voters selected from nonprobability online panels. The margin of sampling error for voters overall is estimated to be plus or minus 0.4 percentage points. Find more details about AP VoteCast’s methodology at https://ap.org/votecast.

SAN CARLOS, Ariz. — After missing 40 days of school last year, Tommy Betom, 10, is on track this year for much better attendance. The importance of showing up has been stressed repeatedly at school — and at home.

When he went to school last year, he often came home saying the teacher was picking on him and other kids were making fun of his clothes. But Tommy’s grandmother Ethel Marie Betom, who became one of his caregivers after his parents split, said she told him to choose his friends carefully and to behave in class.

He needs to go to school for the sake of his future, she told him.

“I didn’t have everything,” said Betom, an enrolled member of the San Carlos Apache tribe. Tommy attends school on the tribe’s reservation in southeastern Arizona. “You have everything. You have running water in the house, bathrooms and a running car.”

A teacher and a truancy officer also reached out to Tommy’s family to address his attendance. He was one of many. Across the San Carlos Unified School District, 76% of students were chronically absent during the 2022-2023 school year, meaning they missed 10% or more of the school year.

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This story is part of a collaboration on chronic absenteeism among Native American students between The Associated Press and ICT, a news outlet that covers Indigenous issues.

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Years after COVID-19 disrupted American schools, nearly every state is still struggling with attendance. But attendance has been worse for Native American students — a disparity that existed before the pandemic and has since grown, according to data collected by The Associated Press.

Out of 34 states with data available for the 2022-2023 school year, half had absenteeism rates for Native American and Alaska Native students that were at least 9 percentage points higher than the state average.

Many schools serving Native students have been working to strengthen connections with families, who often struggle with higher rates of illness and poverty. Schools also must navigate distrust dating back to the U.S. government’s campaign to break up Native American culture, language and identity by forcing children into abusive boarding schools.

History “may cause them to not see the investment in a public school education as a good use of their time,” said Dallas Pettigrew, director of Oklahoma University’s Center for Tribal Social Work and a member of the Cherokee Nation.

The San Carlos school system recently introduced care centers that partner with hospitals, dentists and food banks to provide services to students at multiple schools. The work is guided by cultural success coaches — school employees who help families address challenges that keep students from coming to school.

Nearly 100% of students in the district are Native and more than half of families have incomes below the federal poverty level. Many students come from homes that deal with alcoholism and drug abuse, Superintendent Deborah Dennison said.

Students miss school for reasons ranging from anxiety to unstable living conditions, said Jason Jones, a cultural success coach at San Carlos High School and an enrolled member of the San Carlos Apache tribe. Acknowledging their fears, grief and trauma helps him connect with students, he said.

“You feel better, you do better,” Jones said. “That’s our job here in the care center is to help the students feel better.”

In the 2023-2024 school year, the chronic absenteeism rate in the district fell from 76% to 59% — an improvement Dennison attributes partly to efforts to address their communities’ needs.

“All these connections with the community and the tribe are what’s making a difference for us and making the school a system that fits them rather than something that has been forced upon them, like it has been for over a century of education in Indian Country,” said Dennison, a member of the Navajo Nation.

In three states — Alaska, Nebraska, and South Dakota — the majority of Native American and Alaska Native students were chronically absent. In some states, it has continued to worsen, even while improving slightly for other students, as in Arizona, where chronic absenteeism for Native students rose from 22% in 2018-2019 to 45% in 2022-2023.

AP’s analysis does not include data on schools managed by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education, which are not run by traditional districts. Less than 10% of Native American students attend BIE schools.

At Algodones Elementary School, which serves a handful of Native American pueblos along New Mexico’s Upper Rio Grande, about two-thirds of students are chronically absent.

The communities were hit hard by COVID-19, with devastating impacts on elders. Since schools reopened, students have been slow to return. Excused absences for sick days are still piling up — in some cases, Principal Rosangela Montoya suspects, students are stressed about falling behind academically.

Staff and tribal liaisons have been analyzing every absence and emphasizing connections with parents. By 10 a.m., telephone calls go out to the homes of absent students. Next steps include in-person meetings with those students’ parents.

“There’s illness. There’s trauma,” Montoya said. “A lot of our grandparents are the ones raising the children so that the parents can be working.”

About 95% of Algodones’ students are Native American, and the school strives to affirm their identity. It doesn’t open on four days set aside for Native American ceremonial gatherings, and students are excused for absences on other cultural days as designated by the nearby pueblos.

For Jennifer Tenorio, it makes a difference that the school offers classes in the family’s native language of Keres. She speaks Keres at home, but says that’s not always enough to instill fluency.

Tenorio said her two oldest children, now in their 20s, were discouraged from speaking Keres when enrolled in the federal Head Start educational program — a system that now promotes native language preservation — and they struggled academically.

“It was sad to see with my own eyes,” said Tenorio, a single parent and administrative assistant who has used the school’s food bank. “In Algodones, I saw a big difference to where the teachers were really there for the students, and for all the kids, to help them learn.”

Over a lunch of strawberry milk and enchiladas on a recent school day, her 8-year-old son Cameron Tenorio said he likes math and wants to be a policeman.

“He’s inspired,” Tenorio said. “He tells me every day what he learns.”

In Arizona, Rice Intermediate School Principal Nicholas Ferro said better communication with families, including Tommy Betom’s, has helped improve attendance. Since many parents are without working phones, he said, that often means home visits.

Lillian Curtis said she has been impressed by Rice Intermediate’s student activities on family night. Her granddaughter, Brylee Lupe, 10, missed 10 days of school by mid-October last year but had missed just two days by the same time this year.

“The kids always want to go — they are anxious to go to school now. And Brylee is much more excited,” said Curtis, who takes care of her grandchildren.

Curtis said she tells Brylee that skipping school is not an option.

“I just told her that you need to be in school, because who is going to be supporting you?” Curtis said. “You’ve got to do it on your own. You got to make something of yourself.”

The district has made gains because it is changing the perception of school and what it can offer, said Dennison, the superintendent. Its efforts have helped not just with attendance but also morale, especially at the high school, she said.

“Education was a weapon for the U.S. government back in the past,” she said. “We work to decolonize our school system.”

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Lee reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Lurye reported from New Orleans. Alia Wong of The Associated Press and Felix Clary of ICT contributed to this report.

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