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Too many students in Indiana are missing school. And Indiana lawmakers have struggled to find a fix for the issue of absenteeism.
Finding a balance between punitive and proactive measures to fix absenteeism where it’s highest — in the earliest grades and in high school — has evaded Indiana lawmakers trying to grapple with the state’s absenteeism rates, which peaked during COVID and still remain high in Indiana and nationwide.
With Senate Bill 282 , which members of the Senate Committee on Education and Career Development approved unanimously on Wednesday, they seek to begin to address the bell curve of absenteeism.
“There are younger students that have truancy issues, and there are older students. Trying to wrap your arms around that 900-pound gorilla I found to be absolutely impossible,” said said Sen. Stacey Donato, a Republican from Logansport and the bill’s author.