Roughly 8,000 fewer New Jersey students were chronically absent between the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 school years, according to a new report released yesterday by Advocates for Children of New Jersey (ACNJ). The number of K-12 students identified as missing too much school fell from 136,000 to 129,000 children in total, nudging the statewide chronic absenteeism rate from 10.3 percent to 9.7 percent.