Mississippi is tightening school attendance issues through modifications to the state’s compulsory attendance law. Students may now have only five excused absences per school semester before school administrators must directly approve additional absences.
The Mississippi Legislature modified the Mississippi Compulsory School Attendance Law, the state’s public school attendance requirements, as part of Senate Bill 2103, which also increased the salaries of assistant teachers, occupational therapists, special education teachers and school attendance officers. The changes went into effect on July 1.
The new law limits students to five excused absences per semester. In previous years, there was no cap on excused absences, and most schools accepted parent notes as sufficient excuses. The five-absence limit includes those with medical documentation, and a school superintendent or principal must approve any additional excused absences.
Associate State Superintendent Bryan Marshall said the new law prevents students from accumulating too many total absences.
“If you get five (excused) absences a semester, and then we give you five in the second semester, and then you have three unexcused absences each semester, that’s 16 total absences in a year,” Marshall told the Mississippi Free Press on July 28. “So we’re trying to stop you before you become chronically absent, missing too many days. That’s the whole point in the law was to lower the chronic absenteeism rate.”
Parents may only submit written notes to excuse absences three times per semester. The two other allowed excused absences require medical documentation. Marshall said the State Department of Education understands that extenuating circumstances may cause families to go beyond the allowed five absences and the law includes provisions for those cases.
“There are 12 factors in the law that factor in what an excused absence is (including) religious freedom and extenuating circumstances, ” Marshall said. “All those factors can have superintendent approval or their designee’s approval to add additional days to the five.”
Marshall said schools have some flexibility in how they handle absences past the allowed limit.
“They’re going to know the student,” Marshall said. “They’re going to know the student better than you know somebody further up the chain, so I think it’s going to be a case-by-case basis, and I think that’s why attendance is so difficult.”
School attendance officers now evaluate a student’s absences at several different points in the process to determine when they should deem a student truant.
“But they can file truancy at eight, 12, or 15,” Marshall said. “Just kind of depends on where you are in the process.”
Madison County School Superintendent Austin Brown and Assistant Superintendent Sean Brewer discussed the changes for their district in the first installment of Ask the Superintendent on Aug. 17.
“There’s no substitute that can be done at an adequate level for being in a class with a certified, qualified teacher and bringing that human expertise, interacting with students. And so that missed time is critical. It can’t be recreated at that level. And so our kids are missing out at a higher level than it was before.”
“We’ve had school attendance laws in place forever but I think this is a legislature reacting to that and addressing that and bringing the importance of being in school at a higher level than we’re seeing now.”
Students Must Attend School Longer to be Counted Present
The updated law also extended the time students must attend school to be counted present. Students must now attend school for 66% of the instructional day for their attendance to count. Previously, a student was counted present if they attended 63% of the school day.
Most Mississippi schools require student-athletes to be counted for the school day to participate in extracurricular activities. That rule is not part of state law, and Marshall said MDE does not restrict athletic participation.
“That’s a local ed agency’s decision to do those things,” Marshall said.
The Jackson Public School District attendance policy states that “a student with six or more unexcused absences is ineligible to participate in or attend extracurricular and non-instructional activities until reinstatement requirements are met.” JPS students are partially restricted from selected extracurricular activities at nine absences and fully restricted at 12.
The law does prevent schools from counting a student as absent while they are participating in a school activity or event.
‘If They’re Not in School, Where Are They?’
Marshall said conversations surrounding the change began in October of last year. Marshall said chronic absenteeism had risen significantly in the state, though much of the original bill’s language was outdated. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing more than 10% of the school year. The state includes both excused and unexcused absences and suspensions in the count.
“The chronic absenteeism number had grown significantly after COVID,” Marshall said. “Obviously, it did across the nation, but most (states’ numbers) started to plateau. Ours kept growing. I think what was alarming was that ours kept inching further and further toward the 30%.”
In October 2025, the Mississippi Department of Education reported that the state’s chronic absenteeism rate rose from 24.4% in the 2023-24 school year to 27.6% for the 2024-25 school year. The agency said the highest percentage of excessive absences occurred among high school students.
“I think that was the question everybody was asking: if they’re not there, then what are they getting into while they’re not there?” Marshall said.
The report found that a third of all the absences reported in the 2024-25 school year were excused.
Last year, Mississippi Superintendent Lance Evans argued that high absences are detrimental to student learning.
“When students are not in school, they are missing valuable instruction from their teachers and social interaction with their peers,” Evans said in the Oct. 16, 2025 statement. “Missing 18 or more days of school has serious consequences for academic achievement and long-term success. We need families, educators and community partners to join forces to combat chronic absenteeism.”
Schools Must Inform Parents of Their Student’s Attendance Status
Schools must provide parents a warning that they are approaching the attendance limit, on the third unexcused absence. Once a student accumulates five unexcused absences, the school districts may begin an intervention plan, which puts measures in place to support students and families in reducing absences.
“(Interventions) could look different in elementary school than it does middle school or high school and so it’s one of those things where at five the school should be taking little tense steps before they get to eight,” Marshall said.
Once a student reaches eight unexcused absences, the new law allows a school or district to file a court petition for truancy if the school can demonstrate it provided families with resources to help reverse the chronic absenteeism.
“If those tier intervention processes and the offerings have not been produced, then the school attendance officer is not supposed to file that child in youth court,” Marshall said.
Those resources include information on third-party services or organizations designed to break down the barriers preventing students from coming to school.
Mississippi school districts must now adopt and publish a written absence reduction plan to implement if any subgroup or grade level exceeds 10% chronic absenteeism. The law provides MDE support to districts in developing and implementing those strategies.
Helping Schools Prepare
The State Department of Education already sponsors an attendance awareness campaign. MDE’s Every School Day Counts – Attend to Achieve campaign provides schools with resources and materials to promote attendance. The agency encourages schools, districts and local organizations to promote the benefits of regular school attendance during September, which is recognized nationally as Attendance Awareness Month.
It also hosts an annual conference on chronic absenteeism and dropout prevention that provides schools with strategies to address chronic absenteeism.
When the new regulations passed, MDE worked with the Gulf Comprehensive Center to develop a playbook for Mississippi attendance, which it distributed to superintendents, principals and school administrators on July 17. The guide includes a template for how school districts can handle attendance and sample interventions. The agency also sent districts clarification on the law’s new provisions.
“I think the legislature gave us til Aug. 15 to have a template out, so we were a month ahead of schedule,” Marshall said. “We felt like it was important to get it out before school started, so that we could get a start on attendance before school started.”
Marshall said the agency wanted districts prepared to get the word out and field questions from families.
Madison County School Superintendent Austin Brown said in the district’s Ask the Superintendent on Aug. 17 that Madison County school officials have spent a great deal of time studying the requirements so that they can answer parents’ questions effectively.
“While it’s not been the only question we’ve asked, it’s been the hottest topic,” Brown said. “And so yes, it’s very important to us that we be sure that we are communicating in the best way we can the heart of this law, the spirit of the law, the letter of the law and the way in which we plan to apply it.”
He also said that while the Madison County District will comply with the law, it will use the flexibility given to it to help families adjust during its inaugural year.
“Since this did come at a time in which we know that a lot of our people had already had some things scheduled,” Brown said, “The flexibility or the discretion that we have been given, we are absolutely going to use that…”
Brown said he had been asked about some parent and teacher concerns that parents may feel forced to send sick students to school. He said those are times when parents and schools should work together.
“Let’s say that you have already excused for a semester your first five (absences). If your child then becomes sick, as Sean alluded to earlier, please don’t send them to school. Please take them to the doctor and address whatever it is they’re ailing from. Get that doctor’s note, bring that back to your principal, and if they miss five days or 12 days, I am going to allow the principals the discretion to, with that doctor’s note, count those as excused. Which means they do not become the unlawful absences…which means those will not be reported to the attendance officer or the courts.”
New Regulations for School Attendance Officers
The law also changed the role of the school attendance officer. School attendance officers can be licensed through three pathways. They can hold a bachelor’s degree in a behavioral field, an associate’s degree in behavior science or a related field with two years of full-time experience or at least three years of experience in a field related to student support and engagement.
Legislators increased school attendance officer pay by $5,000 and implemented salary step increases for years of service similar to those in the state’s teacher pay scale.
“That was monumental because I think it’s going to attract some more people that can do the job,” Marshall said.
The larger applicant pool will help the state meet another provision in the law. The new legislation requires a school attendance officer for every 4,000 students.
“That has created a situation where we do have to move some people around, especially in the smaller school zones or school districts, where there may not be but 1,200 kids in the district and then there’s another district the next county over that has 1,500,” Marshall said. “(One) person can serve us both theoretically, but you know, it’s difficult to go county to county. That’s increased travel time and a little bit of time away from each building where they were. So we’re trying to navigate some of that.”
To accommodate, the state will soon advertise for nine new attendance officers.
Their responsibility is to collect data from the school district showing they’ve gone through their intervention process and offered either third-party family engagement or a diversion process.
Marshall said that all the measures are in the best interests of student learning.
“Honestly, we can’t teach them if they’re not there,” Marshall said. “That’s what they need to know. Every day that they miss school, they’re behind… We need them there so we can educate them.”
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