Georgia state senators unanimously passed a bill Wednesday intended to address chronic absenteeism, which refers to when students miss 10% or more of the school year.
According to the Georgia Department of Education, the rate of chronic absenteeism in Georgia was 21.3% in 2024. Schools have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels of around 12%.
Senate Bill 123 would prevent public school students from being expelled solely due to absences. It would also require school climate committees, appointed by the chief judge of each county’s superior court, to develop protocol and policy recommendations for addressing chronic absenteeism by June 2026.
Local school systems with chronic absenteeism rates of at least 10% or systems with one or more schools with rates at or above 15% would need to establish an attendance review team for the school system or individual schools.
The attendance review teams, which could include administrators, counselors, teachers, social workers, parents and other staff, would create intervention plans for individual students that are chronically absent.
“Addressing chronic absenteeism is not just about improving attendance,” Senate President Pro Tempore John F. Kennedy, lead sponsor of SB 123, said on the Senate floor. “It’s about taking the essential step forward and breaking down the barriers that prevent our students from reaching their full potential.”
According to the Education Recovery Scorecard, a project created by researchers at Harvard and Stanford, Georgia students are still lagging behind in reading and math achievement following the pandemic. Researchers say a contributing factor is the rise in chronic absenteeism since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Lowering absenteeism generates tremendous bang-for-the-buck,” said project leader and Harvard education professor Tom Kane. “Regular attendance benefits the student as well as her classmates. And taxpayers are paying for the seat whether it’s occupied or not.”
Republican State Sen. Billy Hickman said absenteeism affects students across the board and will have larger impacts on Georgia’s future workforce.
“We keep talking about workforce development. But if children can’t read and if they don’t come to school, we can’t find jobs for them,” he said.
Though SB 123 was co-sponsored by Republicans, the bill has enjoyed bipartisan support in the Senate. Democratic State Sen. RaShaun Kemp, a freshman senator in the Senate Education and Youth Committee, thanked Kennedy for introducing the bill.
“Martin Luther King Junior said, ‘Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education,’ and if our kids are not in our schools, they’re not receiving that education,” he said. “All of this hard work that we’re doing, Mr. Chairman, on literacy is going to be for naught if our kids are not in school learning the science of reading.”
The bill will now go to the House.
