The St. Joseph School District said more than 15% of its students were absent Tuesday, the same day at the Royals celebration.

Schools in Kansas City canceled school Tuesday for the Royals World Series victory celebration.  The St. Joseph School District chose to stay in session due to several reasons.

“We need to be in school when possible, as our mission is to educate each child for success,” said Joey Austin, St. Joseph School District Communications Dir. “We also took into consideration we had a large gathering of over 200 students participating in the High School Business camp at EmpowerU. Canceling school would have also been a difficult situation for many of our parents who would not have had childcare options. While we celebrate the Royals and were thrilled with their historic world series win, we had to continue the teaching and learning process that happens in our classrooms daily.

However, parents who wanted to take their kids to the festivities were given the option to take them out of school for the day.

“While we always encourage good attendance and we believe that students should be in school whenever it is in session, parents always have the right to make the decision regarding their students attendance,” Austin said.

District-wide attendance was at 84.4% Tuesday, a drop of 9.5% from the 2014-15 average.

Austin said most absences were entered as “Parent Choice.”

“Which could be a variety of reasons but I’m sure we can assume MOST were due to the Royals celebration,” she said.

Here’s the attendance percentage list provided by the district for each individual school: