Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland had a pronounced — and public — disagreement in September. 

Strickland presented MSCS truancy and enrollment numbers in his weekly email update suggesting that both were connected to rising juvenile crime in the city.

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“The large increase in juvenile crime is certainly directly impacted by more teens out of school without supervision, education and career plans,” he said in his message.

Shawn Page, MSCS chief of academic operations and school support, publicly disagreed with Strickland in September and again in a recent interview with The Daily Memphian.

“There is juvenile crime happening during school, but the vast majority of research shows that it happens after school hours,” Page said in the interview.

Data from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Prevention, a subset of the U.S. Department of Justice, backs up his claim.

According to the most recent data from the DOJ, as of April 2022, juvenile crime peaks at 3 p.m. on school days. Most MSCS schools end the day around the same time.

“This notion that the students, that the decline (in enrollment), are causing youth crime or breaking into houses, I think that is fallacious,” Page said at a press conference shortly after Strickland’s September email.

There were 907 total serious delinquent charges against 544 juveniles in Memphis and Shelby County in 2022, an increase of 6.5% in 2022 compared to the year before and 25.1% compared to 2020, according to data from the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission.

And while it’s true the number of juvenile charges has risen since 2020, it’s still not at pre-pandemic levels. Compared to 2019, last year’s total charges were down 24% and compared to 2011, they were down 14.8%. An exact measurement of the number of crimes committed is not available.

Chronic absenteeism at MSCS 

Page doesn’t believe that truant students are necessarily committing crimes when they should be in school, but he’s still concerned with getting them back in the classroom. More than addressing truancy, he’s most concerned with chronic absenteeism, which takes both excused and unexcused absences into account.

Both refer to instances where a student frequently misses school. Truancy refers to student absences that are not excused, but a student can still be chronically absent even if they have an excuse. 

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Tennessee Department of Education data shows 25.5% of MSCS students were chronically absent in the 2021-22 school year, meaning that they missed 10% or more of all days. That number is up from 19% in 2020-21.

The district had 105,596 students enrolled last school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, meaning close to 27,000 Memphis children were chronically absent from school last year.

Here is what the data says about neighboring school districts:

The percentage of chronically absent students in the state-run Achievement School District was 50.4% last school year, up from 49.3% percent the year before. The district had 8,616 students, most of whom are in Memphis, last school year, according to the NCES.

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By comparison, the percentage of students chronically absent in other school districts in 2021-22 are as follows: 

• Fayette County Schools: 29.1% (from 21.3% in 2020-21)
• Tipton County Schools: 28.6% (from less than 10% in 2020-21)
• Metro Nashville Schools, 29.7% (from 28.9% in 2020-21)

Page also compared MSCS to data from the New York City and Los Angeles school districts which both had rates of 42.5% and 39.8% last year, respectively.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do but it is a local problem, it is a state problem, it is a national problem,” Page said. 

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Ugur Orak, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Middle Tennessee State University, agrees that just because students aren’t in school doesn’t mean they’re out committing crimes.

“They (students) will not engage in delinquency because they skip school. There is no direct association,” he said. 

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It can be a predictor of involvement in criminal activity for some, Orak said, but it’s not a direct link.

“Truancy is not the only risk factor for delinquency because not all truants will be delinquent, and most will not actually,” Orak said.

More concerning for Page and Orak are other issues frequently missing school can cause, especially poor academic outcomes.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, chronically absent students in pre-kindergarten through first grade are less likely to read on grade level by third grade. Not reading on grade level by third grade makes children four times as likely to drop out of high school.

As for older students, the nation’s education department says that chronic absenteeism also can predict dropping out of high school. It cited a study done in Utah that showed being chronically absent for even just one year between the eighth and 12th grades can make a student seven times more likely to drop out of high school.

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And for adults, the department says chronic absenteeism has proven to be associated with several negative outcomes later in life ranging from poverty to poor health to involvement in criminal activity.

“This is going to have negative impacts, including on your criminality,” Orak said.

Root causes of chronic absenteeism in MSCS

Although he said that he has not seen any hard data, Orak guessed that some of the most common reasons students frequently miss school is because of family and school issues.

“They’re not just skipping school for fun,” he said. 

At least for MSCS, that appears to be true. According to Page, one of the district’s biggest barriers to attendance is homelessness.

When The Daily Memphian interviewed Page in January, he said the number of homeless students in the district was around 2,000. But he also said he believes it’s likely higher.

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“Personally, I think the figure’s higher because we have to follow federal reporting processes where we can’t just say somebody’s homeless. We have to identify them or the parent has to notify us et cetera,” Page said.

Page said parent and family illnesses also are common barriers to local student attendance. 

“You label a kid as delinquent, you actually create a future criminal.”

Ugur Orak
Middle Tennessee State University

One of the main ways MSCS addresses truancy is through its tiered intervention support model, which state law requires.

At three unexcused absences a student’s parent or guardian is notified.

At five absences, a Student Attendance Review Team meeting is triggered. The meeting — between a child, their parent or guardian and school administration — addresses attendance issues and see the creation of a parent-student attendance plan.

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At 10 absences, a Student Attendance Review Board meeting is triggered. This is a similar meeting to the team meeting, but it moves from being held at schools to one of the district’s truancy centers. Parents meet with members of the MSCS truancy review team to address attendance barriers. 

If the student keeps accruing unexcused absences after that, the district will refer him or her to Shelby County Juvenile Court. When Page responded to Strickland’s data in September, he said the district had referred 300 to 400 cases up until that early point in the school year.

Orak said that alternative models like what MSCS uses work because criminalizing students for frequently missing school can actually make things worse.

“You destroy the future for the kid, and you give no chance to come back to the conventional pro-social system,” he said. 

He added: “You label a kid as delinquent, you actually create a future criminal.”

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On top of the standard intervention system, MSCS also recently re-launched its truancy and attendance task force, a group of district and local leaders and elected officials dedicated to coming up with attendance solutions.

Page said the group’s first meeting on Jan. 19 was “eye-opening.” 

During the meeting, the group heard from several families struggling with homelessness.

“We need to find a way to get people who don’t have a lot of money a place to live.”

Mary Hamlett
MIFA

Describing some of their stories, Page said they heard from a mother living out of her car while supporting eight kids. Another, a 19-year-old, is supporting his younger siblings in the wake of their parents’ murders.

“When you hear these stories, you understand why some children are not coming to school because they are trying to survive,” he said.

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Page also said the meeting taught him that MSCS can’t solve attendance issues on its own. He said it needs the local faith community; county and city government; and other community-based organizations as well.

“Some of the solutions are inside of Memphis-Shelby County Schools but many are outside of us,” he said.

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One of those organizations is the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association, which in part helps families in the city find stable housing.

Mary Hamlett, vice president of family programs at MIFA, said the organization’s goal is to help those struggling with homelessness to find stable housing in 30 days. There’s just one problem, Hamlett said.

“We are struggling to find landlords that will rent to these families,” she said. 

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Hamlett said landlords are often wary to rent to some families because of blemishes on their records like past evictions. Other times, they sell their properties to investors to make a quick buck.

For past generations, Hamlett said homelessness could be attributed to the erosion of public housing. But she said as time goes on, it might be more common to see homeless adults having struggled with it as a child. 

“We need to find a way to get people who don’t have a lot of money a place to live,” she said. 

For MIFA, affordable housing means having a dedicated space where rent is charged on a sliding scale and is equal to or less than 30% of a person’s overall income.

But making enough money to afford even cheap rent requires stable employment as well, to which connecting parents to is imperative for the success of their children, Hamlett said.

“If the parents aren’t working, there’s no way the little person can go and succeed in school,” she said.