As students across Arizona start going back to school, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego has introduced a bill aimed at reducing chronic absenteeism.
Chronic absence is defined as missing 10% or more of the school year. In Arizona, that’s about 18 days of class.
The state’s percentage of chronically absent students was 28% in the most recent year on record, more than double the rate of the school year before the pandemic.
Gallego’s bill, called Keeping Our Students in School Act, would create a competitive grant program for local education agencies to fund proven absenteeism-reduction interventions.
Those include providing student transportation, conducting home visits and wellness checks, creating student mentorship programs, and investing in absenteeism monitoring software or other tools.
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