How often do Kentucky students miss school?

Well, we also know the Kentucky Department of Education will release numbers for the 2022 23 academic year by the end of this month.

During an interim joint Committee on Education yesterday in Frankfort, Joey Kilburn of Simpson County schools told Kentucky lawmakers.

The pandemic had a big impact on attendance.

But I think the biggest things are attitudes and habits around good attendance have changed.

People establish that habit of, Oh gosh, I don't feel as well as maybe I have on the best day of my life.

So I want to stay home today and then it creates that habit and then that that attitude of, okay, well, you know, where you're sitting next to somebody last week who got sick, so you got to go home for ten days and then you come back for two days and then we do it to you again and you create an attitude about, well, being here must not really be important because they'll send me home pretty willy nilly, Like it's like it's not a big deal.

Now we've got to change those attitudes and change those habits.

Kilburn says students have to want to come to school.

Nobody wants to be somewhere where they don't feel safe, all right.

Nobody wants to be somewhere where they're getting picked on.

I think the power of bullying comes in isolation.

And so, again, it comes back to empowering your student leaders to say that doesn't happen here.

Now, here are Kentucky's truancy numbers.

The last four school years, as you can see, there was a sharp increase during the height of the COVID pandemic.

It was at 36% during the 20 2021 school year.

Kentucky's Department of Education considers students chronically absent if they miss more than 10% of school days, and that's about 17 days in the school year.