Caddo Parish School Board hears plan to cut absenteeism, address extreme behavior and revise SPED placements

Caddo Parish School Board Superintendent Keith Burton on Tuesday presented a multi-part plan to reduce chronic absenteeism, curb extreme student behavior and narrow achievement gaps for students with disabilities.

Burton told the board the plan will reassign existing central-office and program staff into school-based roles, strengthen partnerships with community agencies and law enforcement, and “get to the root cause” of why students miss school or act out rather than rely only on punitive responses. He said the district will not add new staff or vendors immediately but will realign current personnel and budgets.

The presentation said the strategy includes: a full review (“scrub”) of the district’s absenteeism and tardiness policies to align with state law; designation of school-based staff to focus on attendance; closer coordination with existing community partners (TASK/VOA, juvenile court, law enforcement and others); targeted reassignment of Title I, McKinney-Vento and special-education staff to higher-need schools; placing behavior interventionists on single campuses rather than itinerant schedules; and resetting Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) at targeted schools. Burton identified Mr. Greer as the central administrator charged with leading the attendance work and named Dr. Casey Monero as the district child-support specialist who will lead PBIS resets at target schools.

Burton and other staff cited elementary attendance figures provided by TASK/VOA that showed many elementary schools with 25 percent or higher of students missing five or more days in 2024–25, and some schools with 35–39 percent in that category. Burton emphasized the district would begin with elementary schools with the greatest need and expand interventions to middle and high schools, where staff said truancy and discipline challenges can be greater and are managed more directly by the district attendance office.

Board members and staff described existing pilots and programs the district will scale or adapt. Dr. Monero explained the district’s Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) pilot and “We Care” climate-and-culture schools, which district staff say have reduced suspensions and improved engagement. Assistant staff and Mr. Greer said juvenile-court referrals remain a last resort after on-campus interventions; middle- and high-school truancy often involves complex family situations and different case management than elementary attendance.

Board members asked for follow-up data and implementation details. Member Miss Tharpe noted the district’s large drop in expulsions between 2022–23 and later reporting and asked what drove the change. Mr. Greer attributed the earlier spike after 2021–22 to students and staff readjusting to in-person schooling after the COVID-19 pandemic, increased anxiety and behavior manifestations, and the district’s historically punitive coding and discipline practices. Staff said they are simplifying JCampus infraction codes (from roughly 40 down to about 10–11 categories) to improve coding consistency.

Several trustees and the superintendent raised workforce and logistics questions: how to staff school-based roles, whether special-education staff would accept reassignment, and how to replicate grant-driven pilots systemwide without new grant funding. The superintendent said the district had not yet consulted directly with all affected SPED employees and that some SPED positions would remain itinerant where needed. Trustees pressed for further detail on caseloads, training timelines, and metrics the district will use to judge success.

The presentation and Q&A also touched on possible secondary strategies: the district is studying a partial block schedule at high schools (trustees requested a request-for-information to see effects on attendance and engagement), and district leaders said they will pursue deeper partnerships with Camp Minden for court-ordered or voluntary placements for students when appropriate. Trust-based relationship building — named repeatedly by trustees as janitors, coaches, bus drivers or other caring adults — was framed by district leaders as a core theme across all interventions.

Board members asked that staff return with implementation timelines, evaluation metrics and a plan for communicating changes to staff and families. Burton said the core team is already working to roll out the plan and that Mr. Greer, Dr. Monero and other staff are available to answer follow-up questions.

The board did not take a formal vote on the plan during the executive meeting; the presentation closed to questions and moved to agenda-setting business.