Schools; attendance; allowing one day per semester for an excused absence for student mental health; effective date; emergency.
HB1144 amends Oklahoma school attendance laws to expressly allow mental health-related excused absences for students. The bill adds a new category of excused absence for a student’s mental health, limiting it to one full school day per semester, and states that neither students nor parents must provide documentation for that absence. It also clarifies that this absence counts as a valid excuse for attendance-recording purposes.
The bill also updates the compulsory attendance statute to mirror that change by exempting one mental health day per semester from the attendance requirement for children ages 5 through 17. In addition to the mental health provisions, the bill largely preserves existing attendance rules for kindergarten, regular school attendance, 4-H activities, religious observances, military funeral honors, therapy services tied to an individualized education program, online courses, virtual education, and blended instruction. It keeps the current enforcement and penalty structure for attendance violations intact.
If enacted, HB1144 would modify Title 70 of the Oklahoma Statutes, specifically Sections 1-111 and 10-105, by adding a statewide mental health absence option and requiring school districts to treat that absence as excused. The bill would affect school districts, attendance officers, parents, and students by changing how attendance is recorded and by reducing the circumstances under which a student’s absence can trigger compulsory-attendance consequences. It also takes effect immediately upon passage because it contains an emergency clause, with a standard effective date of July 1, 2025.
The available context suggests generally favorable treatment of the bill, but there are no committee transcripts or recorded votes provided to show debate or opposition. The caption and text indicate the bill is framed as a student well-being measure, and the absence of recorded controversy suggests it had not yet reached a point of documented contention in the available materials. Because the bill was only referred to the House Common Education Committee, the legislative record here does not show whether concerns about attendance enforcement, documentation standards, or potential abuse of mental health absences were raised.
HB1144 would amend Oklahoma’s compulsory attendance and attendance-recording statutes to require school districts to recognize one excused mental health absence per semester for each student, without documentation. It would also align the attendance code with that new excuse, while leaving existing attendance penalties, enforcement procedures, and other excused-absence categories largely unchanged.
The bill appears to have a generally supportive or at least noncontroversial framing in the available materials, as it is presented as a student mental health measure and no votes or committee debate are provided. There is no documented opposition in the supplied record, but the absence of transcripts means the level of support cannot be measured beyond the bill’s introduction and referral.
No specific points of contention are documented in the provided committee or vote history. Potential areas of debate, based on the text, could include whether one mental health day per semester is sufficient, whether allowing absences without documentation could complicate attendance enforcement, and how schools would distinguish mental health absences from other excused or unexcused absences. However, no named legislators, groups, or stakeholders are shown raising those concerns in the supplied record.