Jor'Dynn Duncan missed 40 days of school before her death. Her district didn't have to alert CPS.

As Jor’Dynn Duncan racked up 40 absences in the final six months of last school year, Bayport-Blue Point school district officials heard several excuses.

The little girl was sick. A family member had died. She was on a family vacation to Disney World. All those reasons turned out to be false, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.

In May 2025 alone, Jor’Dynn missed nearly the entire month of school, prosecutors said. Seven months later, she was dead at age 7. Her guardian, Emily Kelly, now stands accused of torturing and killing her, with Kelly’s mother and daughter also facing charges.

The case exposes a gap in New York’s approach to chronic absenteeism: Schools must track attendance and report suspected educational neglect, but there is no automatic requirement to notify child welfare agencies when a young child misses a specific number of days. That leaves districts with broad discretion, even in extreme cases.

The absences raise questions about whether more could have been done to determine why Jor'Dynn was missing school and whether outside authorities should have been alerted.

Newsday could not confirm whether anyone from Bayport-Blue Point schools filed a report with Suffolk Child Protective Services about Jor’Dynn in the year she lived with Kelly and attended the district’s Academy Street Elementary. But prosecutors, the school district and a county spokesperson did not dispute the assertion from John LoTurco, Kelly's criminal defense attorney, that no such report was made.

It’s unclear if the district did anything more to investigate the girl’s absences beyond contacting Kelly and receiving the allegedly false excuses. Jor’Dynn died Dec. 29 from an infection caused by a perforated colon, prosecutors said. She was found with 90 recent injuries, including nine inflicted by "sharp force."

The lack of formal reporting requirements is part of a larger, statewide effort to keep kids in homes and out of the child welfare system, advocates and state officials said. But some education officials and lawmakers have expressed concerns that the lack of coordination between schools and child welfare agencies means some children may be missed by the systems meant to protect them.

"Especially in this case, looking at how many days this child missed school, it’s an indication that something was going on," said Suffolk Legis. Greg Doroski (D-Mattituck), who sits on the legislature’s Public Safety Committee. "And I think it should be, going forward, a clear case where there should be some more formal guidelines."

Bayport-Blue Point district officials declined Newsday’s requests to provide details on how they had handled Jor’Dynn’s case, citing the ongoing criminal investigation and prosecution. They also declined to answer a detailed list of questions.

"As this matter involves individual student privacy rights as well as an ongoing criminal investigation and prosecution, the district is unable to share details surrounding the allegations," Timothy Hearney, the superintendent, said in an emailed statement. "We remain committed to fully cooperating with law enforcement."

Calls and emails to all seven Bayport-Blue Point school board members and members of the PTA were not returned, or the individuals declined to comment.

Absences 'conceal' abuse

Last month, Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney charged Kelly, 50, Jor’Dynn’s primary caretaker and her father’s fiancee; Kelly’s mother, Barbara Renner, 75; and Kelly’s daughter, Elyssa Seymore, 24, with the death and months of alleged abuse of Jor’Dynn.

All three defendants, who lived together at the Bayport home with Jor’Dynn, have pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors highlighted Jor’Dynn’s significant number of absences in court documents.

The district was given "detailed excuses" about Jor’Dynn’s absences, which prosecutors determined were "allegedly used to conceal the abuse."

Current and former school officials say a child missing 40 days of school in six months — roughly 40% of the school days over that span — should have raised additional concerns within the district.

"That number of absences would lead to some effort to ascertain what’s going on, provide some assistance or some encouragement," said Bob Lowry, a deputy director at the New York State Council of School Superintendents.

Prosecutors outlined Jor'Dynn Duncan's absences in court documents. Source: Suffolk County District Attorney

A retired Long Island superintendent, who asked not to be named to avoid criticizing colleagues without knowing the details of the case, told Newsday the next logical step would be contacting CPS.

"I would think a district seeing 40 absences should have been a red flag," the former superintendent said, adding that some kind of threshold for districts to report concerns about absences would be helpful.

Jor'Dynn's godmother, Alisha Case, also questioned why the absences didn't result in more being done to help the girl, and whether there are "gray areas" in the law. 

"Is there a certain amount of days that could trigger an investigation?" Case wondered in an interview. 

Under the  Bayport-Blue Point school district’s attendance policies, school officials are supposed to contact parents or guardians after all unexcused absences and "discuss appropriate intervention strategies."

But for elementary school students, the policies mandate a meeting with parents only after chronic absences have persisted well into a school year.

After a student’s 18th absence, according to district policy, a team of school officers "will discuss options including additional classroom support, contacting Child Protective Services, summer school, and anything else related to help the family."

The policy stops short of requiring any specific action by school officials.

Kelly’s attorney, LoTurco, said in an interview Kelly had told him that she and Jor’Dynn’s teacher were in regular contact, and she "had developed a very close relationship with the teacher."

Educational neglect

Under New York law, it is mandatory for children to attend school regularly, and districts are required to track student attendance. Each district must also have processes for "intervention strategies to address identified patterns of unexcused absences," according to legal guidance published by the New York State School Boards Association.

School staff are also required by state law to report cases of educational neglect — cases in which parents fail to ensure their child is attending school, harming or threatening to harm their educational progress — to the statewide clearinghouse for reports alleging child abuse or neglect. Such a report should trigger a CPS investigation into the alleged neglect.

But the definition of educational neglect is vague, with no requirement to report concerns at a certain number of absences.

"I think it is pretty subjective," Erika Palmer, supervising attorney at Advocates for Children, a New York City-based nonprofit that advocates for children’s access to education, said in an interview.

"And I think it's meant to be subjective, because they want to take into account the different reasons that might be leading to the attendance concerns," Palmer said. For example, a case involving a student’s lengthy illness would likely be handled differently than a case of true neglect.

Individual districts have the freedom to design their own policies, according to educational officials and administrators. In fact, schools across the state have very different methods for how they respond to chronic absenteeism — and how and when they involve child welfare authorities.

There is no specific requirement to report a student solely for chronic absenteeism to another entity.

—NYS Education Department spokesman JP O’Hare

"There is no specific requirement to report a student solely for chronic absenteeism to another entity," Education Department spokesman JP O’Hare wrote in an email to Newsday, citing department policy.

Instead, districts are encouraged to "leverage all available resources" to get the student back in the classroom, O’Hare wrote.

The state has started advising districts in recent years to involve CPS "as a tool of last resort," O’Hare told Newsday, adding that "misidentifying the underlying cause of attendance challenges ... may result in ineffective interventions and unnecessary stress for the student and family."

A Suffolk County spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The county’s CPS agency has been cited by the state for errors in its investigation of multiple cases of child fatalities, Newsday reported last month, and the agency has acknowledged it has many inexperienced staff.

The state Office of Children and Family Services, which oversees local CPS agencies, declined to comment.

Vague guidance from state

The state’s vague guidance — and preference for school district autonomy — has led to a patchwork of policies across the state, according to Sen. James Skoufis (D-Cornwall), who introduced legislation regarding student attendance this past session.

Currently, Skoufis said, when it comes to students who miss days upon days of class, school policies around New York are "all over the map."

Some districts have comprehensive policies involving outreach to families, home visits and early warning systems, he said. "And certainly there are many districts that we've identified that are doing either nothing or next to nothing."

Skoufis’ bill would tighten school attendance policies in an effort to combat chronic absenteeism, a nationwide problem that ballooned during COVID-19 and has not subsided.

Newsday reported last month that 17.3% of public school students on Long Island were chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year, meaning they missed 18 or more school days.

That’s down from recent years but well above the pre-pandemic level of 11.4% in 2018-19.

In the Bayport-Blue Point district, where Jor’Dynn attended school, 14.3% of students were chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year, up from 13.6% the previous year.

Under Skoufis’ proposal, districts would be required to create an early warning system "to identify students who need support to improve academic performance, attendance or engagement in school." It would also mandate multiple home visits for students who miss at least 10% of school days during a school year.

That policy would be more comprehensive than those of Bayport-Blue Point’s elementary schools.

The current bill would not require districts to notify outside authorities at a specified number of absences. But the legislation, which remains in committee, will likely "be very explicit in making sure that CPS in one way shape or form is involved here," Skoufis said.

"It's a complicated, difficult and sensitive layer to this already complicated issue," he said, "but my guess is that the amended version is going to speak to it in some way, shape or form."

'Healed up by school’

On May 21, 2025, Kelly told Jor’Dynn’s father, Derrick Dixon, who is incarcerated at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, Kelly had gone to the school that day for a conference with school officials and a social worker because Jor’Dynn had "stuck her fingers down her throat and made herself throw up in the lunchroom."

Prosecutors say not only did that meeting never happen, but school officials said Jor’Dynn never made herself sick and, in fact, wasn’t even in school the day that conference was to have taken place.

After missing 40 days of school between January and June 2025, it’s unclear from court records how many days Jor’Dynn missed during the beginning of the current school year, between September and her death in December.

But a text message conversation in July shows Kelly and her daughter, Seymore, were concerned about Jor’Dynn returning to school in the fall carrying evidence of abuse, court records show.

Kelly and Elyssa Seymore allegedly communicated by text in July about Jor'Dynn returning to school with signs of abuse, prosecutors said. Credit: Suffolk District Attorney's Office

"Idk how she’s supposed to go to school ... like she’s a hot  ...  mess," Seymore texted Kelly as they were discussing marks on Jor’Dynn’s eyes and lips. "Looks like she got beat the whole summer."

Kelly replied, "She will be healed up by school."

Newsday's Grant Parpan and NewsdayTV's Shari Einhorn contributed to this story.