Louisiana’s Department of Education needs to cut through the confusion and make it clear: if a child doesn’t show up to school because parents fear la Immigración, it’s not an excused absence.

Last week, as the federal government publicized and launched an inter-agency effort to detain illegal aliens in the New Orleans metropolitan area, the location with a concentration of these scofflaw residents, Jefferson Parish, saw significantly higher truancy in its schools. It is conjectured that this resulted from families of illegal aliens keeping their children out of school for fear that agents would bust into schools and round up children illegally in the country.

That notion is ridiculous, given official directives that the only such intrusions now permitted would occur if a known criminal (likely incognito) was at a school and only after intensive vetting of the process. There are no jump-out boys launching into a school going door-to-door demanding papeles affirming citizenship or permanent residency; all that has been a fantasy propagated by left-wing education administrators and teachers, special interests, politicians, and media to try to score political points.

It has worked apparently, and it seems likely a large portion of absences in Jefferson schools have come from children illegally in the country, or perhaps even some here legally but whose parents aren’t. The state has guidelines about absences, but school districts have implementation policies regarding absences that generally escalate as more are accumulated. In Jefferson, it defines whether an absence can be excused, what qualifies to expunge an unexcused absence, and interventions for accumulated unexcused absences. Too many of these results in denying a student promotion. Further, at its discretion the district can refer truants and their families to Jefferson Parish Juvenile Court for sanctions, such as fines or community service.

State policy defines excused absences as those occurring when a student has a documented illness or when the student or a family member has a serious illness; when a family member dies; when a religious holiday is observed; when a student is visited by a parent assigned to distant active-duty military service; when a parenting student has just given birth; when a student is engaged in official school travel; or when a natural disaster occurs. Fear of arrest within the family doesn’t qualify.

Yet when contacted, both state and local education officials didn’t clearly stipulate whether this assumed reason for the increased Jefferson absences would be treated as unexcused and setting such students on the road to penalties. The reason, simply, is districts also have policies that govern when an unexcused absence can be redeemed, focused on making up the minimum required instructional minutes a student must have to advance a grade level.

Theoretically, Jefferson could arrange for such compensatory instruction in bulk and invite any student who missed days to make up some or all of their time. But the thing it or any other district should not be allowed to do is waive what are by definition unexcused absences.

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education needs to clarify this. It should add a provision that districts cannot deviate from the defined excused absence list so that any absence for another reason must count as unexcused. Currently, “extenuating circumstances” that could add additional exceptions are allowed by a district at the petition of parents, and any such revision by BESE should make clear anything but the designated exception list must go through this process.

Unfortunately, current Supreme Court interpretation forces schools to educate–and taxpayers to pay–for education of illegal aliens (which may expand to children born in the U.S. to illegal alien parents). Thus they can do little to prevent this burden. As a result, any discouragement, no matter how manufactured, that encourages the most seamless and inexpensive method of reducing the number of illegal aliens–self-deportation–is desirable and should not be subverted. Not allowing local education agencies to make political statements through abusing state policy regarding absenteeism serves both taxpayers and children, and should be taken up with all due speed by BESE.