Proof-of-Concept Simulation Interface
School Attendance & Belonging Engine
This is a proof-of-concept system dynamics simulation interface for learning and simplified policy-exploration, not predicting or forecasting. It may be inaccurate. Do not use for decision making.
Where did this simulation interface come from and why was it made?
A Community Based System Dynamics (CBSD) Workshop and Learning Lab was held April 16–17, 2026 at the Kapor Center in Oakland, CA. Workshop participants leveraged the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) funding problem to learn how to model problems as dynamically complex systems. They produced a qualitative Belonging and Attendance Causal Loop Diagram (CLD).
After the workshop, Global Institute for the Learning Society (GILS) transformed the CLD into a quantitative simulation model and interface to serve as a proof of concept learning tool. The simulation does not represent the actual dynamics of any aspect of the OUSD.
What is OUSD's historical attendance trend and what are some possible futures?
Between 2015 and 2024, OUSD's attendance fell from about 35,900 students to under 30,000. There are likely multiple interdependent factors reinforcing each other which makes it difficult to affect change.
This simulation interface turns that story into a model of an imaginary OUSD that you can experiment with by testing possible future scenarios based on different interventions. Starting from OUSD's calibrated 2024 position, every scenario projects one decade ahead, to 2034: if nothing changes, how much worse do things get, and which imaginary interventions could possibly improve outcomes?
Key Attendance Factors
🎒 Regular Attenders & Chronic Absentees
Every student is in one of two buckets: attending regularly, or chronically absent. Students move between buckets constantly — some who are chronically absent eventually leave the district (dropout), while new students enroll each year.
🧑🏫 Teacher Capacity
The district hires and loses teachers over time. When enrollment outpaces hiring, classrooms get more crowded — and crowding itself pushes more students toward chronic absence.
💛 Sense of Belonging
A slow-moving "emotional stock." It builds when students participate and quietly erodes when they don't — like trust, easy to lose and slow to rebuild. Capped on a 0–100 index: the closer it gets to 100, the harder it is to build further.
A dynamic system of four interdependent stocks
The system that drives the historical pattern of declining attendance is dynamic and complex. It is made of 4 key inter-dependent stocks: Student Sense of Belonging, Student Attendance, Teachers and Funding. They are inter-connected via reinforcing and balancing feedback loops which require multi-pronged interventions to shift to new patterns. For example, increased attendance — which is the goal — can increase teacher-student ratios which can in turn lead to lower attendance.
A slow-moving emotional asset
Belonging builds when students show up and feel connected — and quietly erodes when they don't. It acts as a multiplier on attendance: high belonging pulls students back, low belonging accelerates absence. It is capped at 100 and the closer it gets, the harder it is to keep building.
The central stock
Every student is either attending regularly or chronically absent. Students shift between these states continuously — some chronically absent students recover, others eventually drop out. New students enroll each year, keeping both stocks in constant motion.
Capacity that adjusts slowly
The district hires and loses teachers over time. When enrollment outpaces hiring, classrooms grow more crowded — and crowding itself pushes more students toward chronic absence, creating a balancing pressure that works against the attendance goal.
The resource constraint
Funding flows with attendance — more students present means more state revenue. That revenue enables teacher hiring. When attendance falls, funding contracts, making it harder to maintain staffing ratios, which in turn compounds the attendance decline.
Macro structure of the system
Arrows show causal connections between stocks.
💡 Double-click any stock box to jump to its detailed structure diagram in the Model Details tab.
The takeaway
Because Belonging, Attendance, Funders and Teachers are tightly coupled through reinforcing and balancing loops, single-lever fixes underperform. A funding injection without addressing belonging, or a hiring push without rebuilding attendance, will be dampened by the other loops. Combined, multi-pronged interventions are required. The five 2024–2034 scenarios in the next tab explore such interventions.
Five ways forward — including doing nothing
Each scenario changes a small set of real policy "knobs" — how fast belonging is built, how aggressively the district hires, how deeply it invests in community ties — starting from the district's actual 2024 position. Pick one to see what the next decade looks like.
Total district attendance, 2024–2034
Solid = this scenario. Dashed grey = status quo.
Sense of Belonging
Belonging index, 0–100 (asymptotic ceiling)
Teacher Capacity
Teachers on staff
Regular vs. Chronically Absent
Composition of total attendance
Build your own scenario
Move any slider to set your own policy mix. The charts update live. Every slider maps to a real, named parameter in the underlying model.
Total district attendance
Your mix (solid) vs. status quo (dashed grey)
Belonging & Teacher Capacity
Secondary indicators for your mix
All five scenarios, side by side
The same next decade — 2024–2034 — five different policy mixes. Community engagement and the integrated whole-child strategy pull noticeably ahead because they're the only approaches that touch more than one loop at once. Status quo, meanwhile, keeps sliding.
Total district attendance, 2024–2034
All five scenarios overlaid
2034 outcomes at a glance
Detailed stock & flow structures
Each diagram shows the full internal mechanics of one stock and flow sector — variables, rates, and cross-sector links. Dashed blue boxes are shadow variables referencing stocks from another sector. Pink arrows are causal connections. Thick white arrows with clouds on the end are flows that increase or decrease stocks.
