Correction: An earlier draft said Lee improved while every other I-95 corridor district worsened, but the comparison did not include every district in the statutory corridor and omitted Dillon Four from the prose. It also called Dennis Elementary the state's largest 2022-to-2025 school improvement. This version defines a seven-district comparison and reports Dennis as second among schools with complete records over that interval.

Lee County School District^↗ET reported a chronic absenteeism rate of 25.1% in 2025, down 8.3 percentage points from 33.4% in 2022. Each of the six districts in the article's defined comparison set moved in the other direction.

The reported number of chronically absent Lee County students fell from 551 to 360. Enrollment also fell, from 1,648 to 1,434, so the counts and the rate both moved down.

Six comparisons, six increases

Allendale County School District^↗ET rose 17.6 points, from 24.2% to 41.8%. Dillon School District Four^↗ET rose 8.1 points, from 25.6% to 33.7%. Marion County School District^↗ET rose 7.0 points, from 24.1% to 31.1%.

Marlboro County School District^↗ET rose 0.6 point, from 38.1% to 38.7%. Orangeburg County School District^↗ET rose 8.0 points, from 22.9% to 30.9%. Williamsburg County School District^↗ET rose 5.6 points, from 30.0% to 35.6%.

The peer average is an unweighted average of those six district rates. Lee was 5.9 points above that average in 2022 and 10.2 points below it in 2025. The six peer rates ranged from 30.9% to 41.8% in 2025.

These seven districts are an explicit, non-exhaustive comparison set drawn from counties included in South Carolina's I-95 Corridor Authority legislation. The result is not a claim about every district in the statutory I-95 region.

A low point, then a rebound

Lee's path was not a steady decline. Its rate moved from 33.4% in 2022 to 28.3% in 2023 and 17.6% in 2024. It then rose 7.5 points to 25.1% in 2025.

The 2024 rate was 5.6 points below South Carolina's 23.2% rate. In 2025, Lee was 2.8 points above the statewide rate of 22.3%.

The rebound means the district did not hold its 2024 low. The four-report comparison still shows a lower rate in 2025 than in 2022.

Dennis Elementary's larger decrease

Dennis Elementary School's rate fell from 50.9% in 2022 to 10.1% in 2023, a 40.8-point decrease. That was the largest decrease among 1,145 schools with reported rates in both years.

The rate was 12.1% in 2024 and 6.8% in 2025. The full 44.1-point decrease ranked second among 1,118 schools with complete 2022 and 2025 rates.

Dennis enrolled 411 students in 2022 and 380 in 2025. The reported chronically absent count fell from 209 to 26, a reduction of 183 students. Its 2025 rate was 15.5 points below the statewide rate.

What the records cannot explain

The absence records are direct evidence of the rates, counts, trends, and ranks reported here. They do not include district or school attendance interventions, implementation dates, or a comparison group that could establish why the rates changed.

Enrollment and cohort composition are competing explanations for part of the movement. A sustained attendance intervention is unresourced as a mechanism in the available data. Dennis' three reports well below its 2022 rate are suggestive context for persistence, not proof of a program effect.

Rates and counts come from the official South Carolina School Report Cards chronic absenteeism data, covering the 2022 through 2025 reports.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.