Nearly a third of students miss school during holiday

Despite low turnout, schools want to continue using Thanksgiving break for make-up

Family vacations took precedence over school last week for over 1,000 St. Charles Parish students, with 1,500 reported absences on Monday and 2,622 on Tuesday.

The St. Charles Parish public school district has 9,628 students.

Though any student that missed school was marked as absent, there were no tests issued and students will get an opportunity to make-up school work that took place on either day.

“Superintendent Rodney Lafon had already talked to all the principals and made sure that there were no tests given during those two days,” Rochelle Cancienne-Touchard, the schools’ director of public information, said. “We didn’t expect people who had made vacation plans months ago to have to change them, so we weren’t surprised that a lot of students were absent.”

Typically, public school students in the parish are off school for an entire week because of Thanksgiving. Due to Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, the school system decided to stay open on Nov. 24 and Nov. 25 to make-up some of the missed days.

If hurricanes cause cancellation of school next fall, the school system plans to again use days of the Thanksgiving holiday in order to make-up some of the lost time.