a bill to raise the school attendance age<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThis is an idea for which we\u2019ve seen support in every meeting so far,\u201d Sen. Chuck Payne, R-Dalton, the committee\u2019s chairman, told Capitol Beat before the meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Payne said the committee plans to file its recommendations for consideration in January, when the legislature reconvenes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe can already spot kids who are heading down the wrong path by middle school,\u201d he said. \u201cThe question is, what more can we do to get them back on the right track?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe goal for all of us is to see every student graduate high school,\u201d said Kevin Daniel, chief of staff for the Cobb school superintendent\u2019s office. \u201cThe true challenge is seeing a student who doesn\u2019t want to be there.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Walton also asked how a new mandatory attendance age would be enforced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have to determine if current high school truancy efforts are effective,\u201d she said. \u201cIn Cobb, we have three truancy officers serving 17 high schools. That\u2019s three officers for tens of thousands of students.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
State Sen. Gail Davenport, D-Jonesboro, said she thought every Georgia school district has truancy resources, but Walton said those decisions are left to individual districts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
State Sen. Lindsey Tippins, R-Marietta, said the reason Georgia hasn\u2019t raised the mandatory age before now is because of \u201ctoo many unanswered questions like these in the past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cKeeping kids in school is going to take a much more comprehensive effort than this,\u201d Tippins said. \u201cJust raising the age from 16 to 17 is going to open a lot more unanswered questions, and the definition of insanity is taking the same approach, year after year, and expecting a different result.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jackson said Georgia\u2019s current school attendance law is antiquated, dating back to the 1940s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe know if kids drop out of school at 16, the best they can do is maybe get a minimum wage job or eventually become dependent on the state,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are in a technological environment now, and we need to prepare our young people is to take on challenges of tomorrow.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t drink, smoke, vape, go into the military, get an adult driver\u2019s license or watch an R-rated movie at 16,\u201d added state Sen. Albers, R-Roswell. \u201cBut the one thing you can do, that will potentially wreck your entire life, is drop out of school. It\u2019s crazy to think we would not require a kid at that age to be in school.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n[mailerlite_form form_id=9]\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Legislators studying the issue of raising Georgia\u2019s mandatory age for school attendance from 16 to 17 were met with tough, complex questions from some metro Atlanta school officials on Wednesday. \u201cThe first question for us is, what is the reason for raising the age for compulsory attendance?\u201d asked Gretchen Walton, compliance and legislative affairs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[8506,8782,8474,9485],"class_list":["post-29304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","tag-education","tag-georgia","tag-sun","tag-top","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}