Fewer than one in 14 Lee County students was chronically absent last school year, down from more than one in three two years earlier. By The Lee Daily Register’s count from the state’s School Quality Profile for Lee County Public Schools, 187 of the division’s 2,641 students missed 10% or more of the days they were enrolled in 2025-26, a rate of 7.1%. In 2023-24 the figure was 963 of 2,768 students, or 34.8%.
Virginia’s rate for 2025-26 is 12.9%, according to the state profile. Two years ago the state’s rate was 15.7%, so Lee went from more than double the state figure to well under it. The profile shows each school on its own page; the table below puts all ten side by side.
Ten schools, three school years
| School | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2025-26 | Students, 2025-26 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dryden Elementary | 36.5% | 5.6% | 2.5% | 6 of 241 |
| Elk Knob Elementary | 42.6% | 4.8% | 2.9% | 8 of 275 |
| Flatwoods Elementary | 35.5% | 1.8% | 3.2% | 11 of 348 |
| Rose Hill Elementary | 33.8% | 0.0% | 2.7% | 5 of 184 |
| St. Charles Elementary | 27.1% | 2.2% | 2.7% | 3 of 112 |
| Elydale Middle | 28.3% | 1.5% | 1.6% | 2 of 124 |
| Jonesville Middle | 30.2% | 1.3% | 1.8% | 4 of 218 |
| Pennington Middle | 13.9% | 1.1% | 3.8% | 10 of 264 |
| Lee High | 41.2% | 20.2% | 21.4% | 128 of 599 |
| Thomas Walker High | 39.5% | 6.3% | 2.9% | 8 of 272 |
| Lee County Public Schools | 34.8% | 7.9% | 7.1% | 187 of 2,641 |
| Virginia | 15.7% | 14.7% | 12.9% | 154,548 of 1,201,432 |
Nine of the ten schools were above the state rate in 2023-24. Only Pennington Middle, at 13.9%, was below it. By 2025-26 the picture had reversed: Lee High is the only school above 12.9%.
Most of the remaining problem is at one school
That leaves Lee High carrying most of the division’s total. Its 128 chronically absent students are 68% of the division’s 187, although it enrolled about 23% of the division’s students. The school’s rate halved in 2024-25, from 41.2% to 20.2%, and has barely moved since.
The other eight schools, leaving out both high schools, had 49 chronically absent students among 1,766 in 2025-26, or 2.8%. In 2023-24 the same eight schools had 531 among 1,704, or 31.2%. Within Lee High, the profile shows 25.4% of boys (78 of 307) and 17.1% of girls (50 of 292) were chronically absent in 2025-26.
A drop the profile does not explain
Lee’s fall of 27.7 percentage points in two years is far larger than any change in the other Southwest Virginia divisions we checked. Among those seven, the largest decline was in Dickenson County, from 40.5% to 29.7%, or 10.8 points. Wise went from 10.5% to 8.2%, Scott from 10.9% to 9.6%, Russell from 15.2% to 13.3% and Tazewell from 23.8% to 21.4%. Buchanan rose from 19.7% to 25.0%, and Norton from 8.4% to 14.1%.
The Lee County profile does not say what changed. A note on the division page says that, beginning in 2023-24, the rates the state uses for school accreditation count flexible in-person make-up time with a licensed teacher. The page does not show how much of that time Lee students logged. VDOE’s own explainer on chronic absenteeism would not load for us, so we could not check it. The division’s central office in Jonesville is the place to ask; the profile lists Brian Dean as superintendent.
Small counts, big swings
Year-to-year moves at the small schools can reflect a handful of students. Pennington Middle’s rise from 1.1% to 3.8% is 3 students to 10. Rose Hill Elementary went from none in 2024-25 to 5, and at St. Charles Elementary, with 112 students, one child is about 0.9 of a point.
The profile defines a chronically absent student as one who misses two or more instructional days a month, about 18 days or 10% of a 180-day year, whether the absences are excused or unexcused. Column labels in the state’s downloadable data file show the rate is based on students enrolled for at least half the year, and its 2023-24 school figures match our table.
All figures are as of Oct. 28. The percentages and school counts are from the profile pages; the shares for Lee High, the eight-school group and the neighbor comparison are The Lee Daily Register’s own arithmetic. The ten schools’ counts add to 185 chronically absent students in 2025-26, two fewer than the division total the profile reports, and we used the profile’s division figure. A second table on the division page, covering only students who are not full-time “MOP” students, shows 7.6% for 2025-26, slightly higher than the 7.1% above. Parents can see their own school’s figures, including breakdowns by group, on the profiles site, which also offers spreadsheet downloads.
