BATON ROUGE, LA – In a classic Baton Rouge twist of irony, an East Baton Rouge truancy meeting was abruptly cancelled Wednesday night after half the school board failed to show up. The session, intended to address skyrocketing school absenteeism, was derailed when a majority of board members themselves either forgot or just didn’t show up.
Officials had planned to roll out strategies to keep students in class, but by the time the roll was taken, attendance among the adults looked more like a ninth-grade algebra roster. “We can’t talk about truancy if the leaders are truant,” one weary staffer muttered while packing up his laptop.
Those absent offered a variety of excuses ranging from “traffic on I-10” to “doctor’s appointment for my dog.” One board member even claimed they were doing “immersive research” by not attending.
Parents observing the debacle suggested that maybe the school board should be forced to make up missed meetings in summer, just like the students they lecture. For now, the crisis meeting on attendance has been rescheduled, pending enough officials actually attend to call it to order.
In the end, the district’s truancy problem was solved, at least symbolically, by demonstrating it starts at the top.
