Pushing school start times back to address truancy

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Middle and High School students across the state could soon be starting school at a later time.

One Baton Rouge organization believes this could be the solution to kids missing too many school days. 51,000 students in the Capital Region are missing at least five days of school a year, and more than half of them go on to miss at least 15 days or more. That’s according to a new study from the Baton Rouge Area Chamber.

“We have a lot of students missing a lot of school,” said Jake Polansky. “That’s almost one in five students missing 15 days of school a year.”

Jake Polansky is the Manager of Economic and Policy Research at BRAC. He and his team put out a study showing two out of every five students across the Capital Region are truant, meaning they have at least five unexcused absences during the school year. Most of those students then go on to miss 15 or more days. It’s an issue that’s only gotten worse since the pandemic and East Baton Rouge Parish School Board Member Dadrius Lanus believes it needs to be addressed.

“The state’s own policy says that at ten days you’ve now failed the semester, so you have to track a kid at two to three days because it gives you enough wiggle room to catch them before that fifth day and get them back on track,” said Lanus.

Lanus said they track student absences at the beginning of each school year, but he believes they need to start tracking them earlier.

“Let’s say a third grader or second grader, if they’re already truant at that age, the warning signs already show us that they’re not going to be successful and graduate by the time they get to high school because a lot of these are tracked behaviors,” explained Lanus.

Another possible solution is delaying school start times for middle and high school students. A bill now making its way through the legislature would push middle schools to start at 8 a.m. and high schools to start at 8:30. Polanksy said later start times will give students more sleep, increase their academic performance and improve attendance rates. He said we’ll also see a positive impact on our economy.

“When students have later start times, they’re more likely to be in school and that has a positive impact on GDP because students are more likely to graduate, they’re more likely to get an associate’s degree or bachelor’s degree so it’s really a domino effect,” explained Polansky.

Lanus said the school board is also working to put together a task force on truancy. Made up of community members and parents, the task force will talk strategy and come up with possible solutions to tackle the issue before it gets worse.

“These have to be kitchen table conversations,” said Lanus. “if they’re not, we’re going to continue to see the problem exacerbated. People may think it’s a small thing now, but when you go look at other cities that have seen these things ten years ago and where they are now, that’s not where we want to be. We need to be very intentional about it and I think we’re moving in the right direction.”

If the bill passes during the session this year, schools won’t push back their start times just yet. The policy will take two years to go into effect. This would give leaders like Lanus time to plan for later start times and adjust things like transportation and after school activities.

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