Latest data shows nearly half of all Louisiana children are truant from school

By JOHNETTE MAGNER

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    SHREVEPORT, Louisiana (KTBS) — Louisiana has a truancy problem that some are calling a crisis.

The numbers of children missing school over the last two years has surged, and it’s a serious issue, because children who miss school fall behind, and when that happens, they often drop out.

According to the Louisiana Department of Education, 45% of Louisiana children were truant during the 2021-2022 school year. The state truancy rate during the 2018-2019 school year, prior to the onset of COVID, was only 36%.

A child is considered truant in Louisiana if they have five or more unexcused absences in a semester.

The federal government anticipated that COVID-19 would present problems for America’s school children, so Congress appropriated an additional $190 billion to address learning loss, safety needs, and mental health challenges. The truancy crisis, however, has caught many by surprise.

Hedy Chang, the founder and executive director of Attendance Works, has studied the problem extensively and is working with school districts across the country to understand the root causes.

“When schools reopened after the pandemic, in some cases, they reopened to students, but in many cases, they didn’t reopen to parents,” said Chang. “We have to reestablish that connection and make sure that families understand what is going on and what is being learned.”

Truancy rates in most Northwest Louisiana parishes are even higher than the state average. In the 2021-2022 school year, it was 55% in Bossier Parish, 56% in Caddo Parish, 56% in Natchitoches Parish, and 58% in Webster Parish.

Shannon Wyche, who runs the Caddo Parish truancy program for children in kindergarten through fifth grade, attributes the high numbers of truant children to Caddo’s poverty rate. Across the nation, children of color and those living in poverty have been the most vulnerable population.

“We’re talking about a majority of our children living at or below the poverty level,” said Wyche. “We have to address the concerns of the family. Understand that there’s real trauma that has occurred in our little people, and our big people, and we’ve got to see that through that lens.”

What leads to truancy?

Other issues affecting truancy are transportation, gun violence, and a persistent fear of COVID.

Dr. Wanda Thomas, associate professor of pediatrics at LSU Health Shreveport and a practicing pediatrician, believes fear of COVID-19 kept many parents from taking their children to school.

“I had a large subset of families who were very hesitant to return to school, as we loosen mask requirements, as social distancing became less and less on forefront of health maintenance,” said Thomas.

As Wyche works to bring down the Caddo truancy numbers by working one-on-one with families, she often confronts parents who do not understand how important education is in the early years.

“If a child is not reading by the time they are in third grade, have missed all the building blocks in kindergarten, first, and second grade. The likelihood of us as an education system catching them up is very slim.”

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