As the number of Louisiana students who frequently miss school grows, the state Department of Education has unveiled a new strategy for bringing them back.

The new guidelines released this week, called “The Power of Presence,” focus on district and community-level prevention and intervention efforts, rather than punitive measures, to improve attendance. They come as Louisiana’s absenteeism rate has risen the past two school years.

The 31-page guidebook also offers standard definitions of chronic absenteeism, which is when students miss 10% or more of a school year, and truancy to create consistency across school districts. It also emphasizes consistent data collection and reporting so that districts can better track at-risk students.

Some suggested interventions to promote student wellbeing and boost attendance include providing weekend food bags for students dealing with food insecurity, creating a closet with spare clothes for children whose families struggle to afford school uniforms, and encouraging students to join after-school activities.

While schools aren’t required to adopt the strategies, the framework is intended to give districts evidence-based solutions to combat poor attendance, which research has linked to numerous negative outcomes, including lower test scores, poor grades and a higher likelihood of becoming involved in the criminal justice system, education leaders said.

“We are facing a real and urgent challenge,” Sharon Clark, a member of the state education board, said during an annual teacher conference in New Orleans organized by the state education department. “Students are missing too much school, and we are feeling the impact.”

Even as Louisiana climbs in national education rankings, it was one of just five states out of 36 that have released data where absenteeism rates grew during the 2023-24 school year, according to information compiled by FutureEd, a Georgetown University think tank. Last year, nearly 1 in 4 Louisiana students was classified as chronically absent, up three percentage points from the previous year, state data shows.

“Louisiana is the only state in the country where the average student has made” a full academic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic, state Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley said. “But that growth has been minimized by attendance and truancy issues.”

Louisiana’s goal is to reduce absenteeism by 2% annually, officials said. If it achieves that goal, nearly 45,000 fewer children will be considered chronically absent by the 2027-28 school year.

While the framework gives districts flexibility to tailor strategies to their needs, it includes a handful of “universal elements” each school system’s attendance plan should include. Those key strategies include creating partnerships with community organizations, such as churches and local government agencies; keeping families engaged in their children’s education; and forming attendance teams at the school and district level that help track data and coordinate efforts

The guidelines draw on findings from a program piloted by Baker High School two years ago that aimed to drive down absenteeism using simple strategies, such as sending letters home when students rack up absences and checking in with at-risk students to find out why they’re missing school and discuss solutions. After one year, the district saw its share of chronically absent students fall 13 percentage points, to 37%.

While many districts already employ some of the methods the state is encouraging, the new guidelines are the most comprehensive set to date and should lead to more uniformity across the state, said Misty Davis, executive director of attendance strategy at the state education department.

By asking every district to use the same language when talking about attendance, it makes it easier for the state to collect and analyze submitted data, Davis explained. For example, the guidelines make clear when schools should label student absences as excused or unexcused in data systems, she said.

State education department staffers will work with districts that continue to struggle with attendance and help them adopt some of the suggested strategies, officials said. 

“This is getting everybody on the same page,” Davis said, “about how we do it and what it looks and sounds like.”

Louisiana voters will return to the polls to decide whether to approve a constitutional amendment that would permanently raise teacher salaries by $2,250 and support staff salaries by $1,125 under a pair of bills that received final passage in the Legislature on Thursday.

House Bill 466 by Rep. Josh Carlson, R-Lafayette, and HB 473 by Rep. Julie Emerson, R-Carencro, will ask voters to approve eliminating multiple constitutionally protected education trust funds in favor of giving raises to Louisiana teachers, who make roughly $5,000 less on average than educators in other southern states and about $15,000 less than the national average, according to data from the Southern Regional Education Board. If voters approve the amendment, teachers will receive the raises in the 2026-27 school year.

The raises are slightly higher than the $2,000 and $1,000 pay bumps the bills originally proposed. The Louisiana House of Representatives unanimously approved the additional increase Thursday. Both pieces of legislation now head to the governor’s desk for his signature.

“I brought this bill on behalf of our teachers,” Carlson said in a statement. “We wanted to ensure that we did all we could to provide a permanent pay raise.” 

The bills, which repackage part of a constitutional amendment championed by Gov. Jeff Landry that voters shot down earlier this year, are the state’s latest effort to increase educators’ compensation. Lawmakers failed several times in recent years to increase their pay, opting instead for one-time stipends three years in a row. If signed into law, the bills will turn the stipend amount teachers currently receive into a slightly larger permanent pay increase.

Emerson’s bill eliminates three trust funds that funnel millions annually toward state K-12 education initiatives, including early childhood education, student testing help and efforts to improve struggling schools. Instead, the trust funds would be used to pay off longstanding debts related to Louisiana’s teacher retirement system, which is expected to save school districts $2 billion in interest payments. Carlson’s bill mandates that school systems use the savings to give teachers raises.

The bill also requires the state to step in to subsidize the full cost of the raises for districts that do not realize enough savings to do so on their own. It will also cover the estimated $16.7 million to give raises to teachers and staff at charter schools that don’t pay into the retirement system.

The state will have to spend around $250,000 to fund the raises in the roughly seven districts that are expected to come up short in their savings, according to cost estimates for Carlson’s bill. Other districts are expected to have nearly $36 million left over after providing the raises, which the legislation says can be put toward a limited number of uses, including giving teachers additional pay bumps.

If the governor signs the bills into law, Louisiana voters will then need to approve changing the state constitution to eliminate the trust funds. Lawmakers say that vote will likely not happen until April 2026. 

The state’s largest teachers union supports the raises but has expressed concerns about funding them through debt-payment savings.

Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Larry Carter told lawmakers last month that it would be better to include the pay increases in the state’s school-funding formula to prevent the money from being funneled toward different uses down the road.

Educators “cannot rely on good intentions alone,” he said, adding that “we want to get some guarantees.”