With a lifelong New Orleanian at its helm, the district’s attendance office chips away at students missing days — but there’s still work to be done

Data is an important part of Lerone Crayton’s job for NOLA Public Schools. But he doesn’t see himself as a numbers guy. 

A big part of his work as the district’s chief school support officer is to reduce the proportion of students who are “chronically absent,” missing at least 10% of school days. Roughly one-third of all Orleans Parish students now meet that criteria.

To combat absenteeism, Crayton tracks the percentage of students who are chronically absent, the number of kids who are no longer enrolled in school, and the families that his office works with. 

But when he sees the data, he sees people. 

“It’s not just a number here, a number there,” Crayton said. “It’s literally helping our families and being very intentional with the help and the interventions that we’re bringing to them, and then seeing the reward of it.”

Crayton also oversees the district’s Attendance Hearing Office and its Reconnecting Our Students to Education (ROSE) program, which helps students who have been disconnected from school re-enroll. For him, the work hits close to home: he described himself as “that kid” — the child who could easily slip through the cracks.

“If it was not for my parents who were involved, my teachers who were involved, my coaches who were involved, I could literally be that student that could have gotten lost,” he said. “This is a personal endeavor for me … I know the benefits. I’m a living example of it.”

Crayton, 54, understands the challenges of New Orleans because he experienced them. A lifelong New Orleanian, he graduated from Warren Easton High School, attended Dillard University and began his teaching career at Dr. Charles Richard Drew Elementary in the Upper 9th Ward, where he taught special education. 

After Hurricane Katrina, Crayton returned to New Orleans to teach special education in the Recovery School District. He transitioned to special education programming for the district, then joined the student disciplinary hearing office, and the school support office. He’s now forged a nearly 30-year career in education.

Making incremental progress in reducing absenteeism

With the help of the district’s new attendance office, Crayton believes the district’s student body is making headway.

Attendance data from the district reflects incremental progress last school year, 91.1% of NOLA-PS students attended school every day, up from 90.9% the year before, Crayton said. Once again, he emphasized looking beyond the numbers to the people: in a district of roughly 43,000 students, a 0.2% increase represents more than 8,500 people.

The district is proud of its improvement, but aiming for a 95% attendance rate at some point in the future, said Superintendent Fateama Fulmore at a press conference this fall. 

“Every percentage point means more learning time, stronger relationships, and greater opportunity for our students, ” Fulmore said.

There’s still significant work to be done. About 31% of Orleans Parish students were chronically absent last school year, comparable with 30.5% of East Baton Rouge students, but higher than the rate for students across Louisiana, which stands at 21.8%, state data show. 

Students experiencing homelessness or in the foster care system have the highest rates of chronic absenteeism, and high schoolers are the most likely age group to be chronically absent. Missing a substantial part of the school year can lead to poor academic performance and higher dropout rates, research shows. Absenteeism also puts student safety at risk, Crayton said. 

“One of the safest places a student can be between the hours of 7:00 and 5:00 is in school,” he said.

Last school year as part of an effort to combat absenteeism, the district established its Attendance Hearing Office — a centralized attendance office where district employees develop personalized plans for students who are chronically absent. The office aims to help students and families overcome the barriers that may prevent them from coming to school.

Scroll to see how many students were dropped from rolls at each high school last year. District-wide, 850 Orleans Parish public school students missed more than 15 consecutive days of school and were removed from school rolls in compliance with state law. (Flourish chart by Vivi Smilgius using schools data)

‘These are not families that want to be non-compliant’

There are dozens of reasons that kids might be chronically absent, Crayton said: some students might skip school to work and support their families financially; others live in families that lack transportation or have parents or caregivers who struggle with mental health.

“These are not students that just want to be lost. These are not families that want to be non-compliant,” Crayton said. “These are the most vulnerable families dealing with a number of different issues.”

Families are referred to the Attendance Hearing Office after students miss 13 to 15 days of school. By the time a referral is made, schools have exhausted their intervention efforts, which include phone calls, home visits and parent conferences, Crayton said.

Last year, the Attendance Hearing Office received 275 referrals, and Crayton said he expects even more this year.

On some more difficult cases, Judge Clinton Smith, of Orleans Parish Juvenile Court, works with students and their families through the Families in Need of Services (FINS) program. Other students may end up in court because of misbehavior while truant. The new attendance office is helping to reduce the number of truant young people Smith sees, he said. 

“We know that if we can address this issue at this level, it prevents them from ending up in front of me,” Smith said.

Other cases end up in Orleans Parish Municipal Court, if a parent or guardian is issued a summons for a chronically absent student.

After a student misses more than 15 consecutive days of school, they are removed from the school’s attendance roll as part of a state law. It’s a painful moment for many employees in the attendance office, Crayton said. Critics say it’s an unnecessary step that does little but reduce the district’s chronic absenteeism rates.

The state’s department of education has not released dropout statistics for last school year, but more than 7,500 students across the state were removed from attendance rolls in the 2024-25 school year. More than 850 of those students attended schools in New Orleans.

What happens when a child is taken off school rolls?

For some students, being separated from school means losing the only place where they received adult support. Those removed from school rolls enter the city’s population of disconnected youth, or young people ages 16 to 24 who are not working or in school.

The state of Louisiana and New Orleans have long had high rates of disconnected youth. In 2022, while the national average rate of disconnected youth was 10.9%, the Orleans Parish rate was 15.6%, representing 6,500 young people. Louisiana had the highest rate of youth disconnection in the nation, at 15.5%, representing 86,900 young people, according to a recent Measure of American report.

When a student is removed from an attendance roll, district employees continue to try and locate them, with the goal of re-enrolling the student through the district’s reconnection program, ROSE, Crayton said. Last year, the program helped 83 students re-enroll.

Though that number is a small fraction of the students who were disconnected from school last year, Crayton views each student as a success story.

“Those are 83 students that, in absence of our intervention, who knows where they could be,” he said.”