Minnesota House Lawmakers are coming together to fight a rise in absenteeism across the state.
A series of new bipartisan bills look to raise clear flags when a student misses consecutive days of school, and changes the age when a child is responsible for their own attendance.
Co-author of the bill House Representative Heather Keeler (DFL- Moorhead) says these are just the first steps in a decade of reform she envisions for Minnesota schools.
"Some schools are taking months to notify the county that a student has not showed up to school, and I think we all agree that that's far too long for students in Minnesota just to be missing from school," Keeler says. "We would like to see quicker reporting from the agency. As of right now, if a school inputs information about their attendance for this school year, it is two years that we get to look at that information."
The most recent data shows that in 2022 more than one in four Minnesota students were chronically absent.
Keeler says some of the problems are stemming from the current reporting systems and not necessarily with families.
"It's cleaning up the relationship and reporting from the school to the county," explains Keeler. "Statute now tells us if a student misses 15 consecutive days, they have to be dropped from the school roster. But there's not good triggers then, over to the county, to make sure we know what's going on with that family."
Keeler says she's hopeful that these initial bills will pass this during the current session so that the legislature can continue to fix the "broken system" further in the years to come.