WICHITA — Three years after the pandemic sent most Kansas kids home to learn, schools have a vexing new challenge: getting them to come back to class.
Missing school has become a crisis statewide. More than one in four Kansas students were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year, which means they missed at least 10% of instruction time. That figure nearly doubled over the previous two years.
State education leaders are still compiling data from last school year, but they expect the problem is getting worse.
