Ginnie Graham

Tulsa World Columnist

Lawmakers who ended punishing school districts for absenteeism problems are right because it’s a measure outside a school’s legal obligation and largely out of their control.

That doesn’t mean school leaders should abandon the efforts.

For the past 18 months, Tulsa Public Schools has pushed on the community to get truant kids into classrooms mostly through awareness campaigns. Students can only learn if they are in class.

TPS Superintendent Ebony Johnson visited the Tulsa World editorial board recently and talked about doubling down on ways to incentivize attendance.

“When it comes to chronic absenteeism, we’ve been doing this for a while, and we realized it is bigger than us,” Johnson said. “It is hard. It is one of the hardest measures to achieve

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