ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — In a city where small choices can bend a young life toward promise or peril, the Truancy Intervention Project (TIP) works at the fault line. This month, Atlanta News First shone its Three Degree Guarantee spotlight on the group, with a donation matched by partner Coolray.
Absenteeism in Georgia schools has reached crisis levels. More than one in five students now miss at least 10 percent of school days each year, according to the state Department of Education.
“Absenteeism rates have gone up in the state of Georgia,” said TIP Executive Director Tonya Ferguson. “If, by the third grade, they’re not reading on a third-grade level, they’ll be more likely to end up in prison.”
That grim math is why TIP set up its offices in the county’s juvenile justice center, right in the heart of Atlanta’s Mechanicsville neighborhood. It is not a place of theory but of triage. Here, Ferguson and her team partner with schools to remove barriers through legal help, mentoring, and family advocacy — the kind of small, steady interventions that keep children from slipping further.
The goal is simple, but enormous: get kids through school with a diploma and a future.
“You know, not necessarily that every child has to go to college – not every child is a college student – but every child has to have something so they can be self-sufficient,” Ferguson said.
One of those children is Latoya Riley. A freshman when TIP found her, she had already become what schools call “chronically absent.” She admits she saw little point in showing up.
“I didn’t have a support, like, a woman’s support system,” she said. “I was used to not having any consequences for my actions.”
What she found in TIP was accountability wrapped in care. Sometimes, Ferguson said, “it’s just as simple as a phone call, just a mentor, because they don’t have that at home.”
Riley graduated from high school. On that day, the staff of TIP filled the seats to cheer her across the stage. A girl who once skipped class had become a young woman walking toward her future, diploma in hand, with an entire community at her back.
More over at Atlanta News First:
Atlanta group working to get kids back into school https://t.co/sPomZSAAdq
— Atlanta News First (@ATLNewsFirst) September 4, 2025
