VIDEO: Students Missing From The Classroom

LOWNDES COUNTY, Miss.(WCBI)—Some numbers stayed the same, some went up and others went down in the 2017 Kids Count Data in Mississippi.

A big focus of the evaluation is education and keeping kids in the classroom.

Lowndes County Superintendent Lynn Wright says multiple absences are not tolerated.

“As recently as seven, eight years ago you could have kids with as many as 60, 70 absences in school, still have passing grades, and they were allowed to get credit for them. The legislature has changed that and the Mississippi Department of Education and now we are able to enforce,”said Lowndes County Superintendent Lynn Wright.

The school district has strict absentee measures and policies if a student misses too many days.

“If they have 21 or more absences during the school year they’re not allowed to get credit for their work. Unless we have had a meeting with the attendance committee, the students and their parents have and they’ve reviewed the absences. Some of them could be for legitimate reasons. They’ve either been sick, injuries, different items that qualify them being excused. The attendance committee will review that and they will make a recommendation to me and I’ll make a recommendation to the board that we wave the absentee rule and go on the merit of their grades,”said Wright.

Dr. Robin Ballard has been assistant superintendent for five years and been in education for 23. She says her students have mentioned they would leave their education behind if there wasn’t a law to keep them in school.

“We’ve seen everything from; split families, loosing a home, sometimes it could be academic. A student just gives up and decides not to come back when they reach the age. When I taught seventh grade, some times I would have students say I can’t wait till I can quit cause they’re already planning to drop out. They feel like there’s nothing for them there,”said Ballard.

These educators believe having several options for students, who do not want to go to a traditional four year college, gives them incentive to complete high school.

“These student will be offered the opportunity to learn these skills at the career tech center. This helps keep students in school. Some of them in the past kind of give up. They didn’t think there was anything there for them now they see that there is a future. We know from data that 92 percent of the students that will take a career tech course will end up graduating if they’ve had it for one year,”said  Ballard.

On the national level, the numbers are higher than Mississippi’s percentage.

The national level for 2013-2015 is 53 percent.