An Act to amend and reenact § 22.1-254 of the Code of Virginia, relating to excused student absences for visitation of immediate family members; active duty military; scheduled for deployment, on leave from deployment, or returning from deployment outside the United States.
HB653 amends Virginia’s compulsory attendance law to require local school boards to excuse student absences for certain family-related and military-related reasons. The bill’s caption indicates it covers visitation of immediate family members and absences tied to active duty military service, including when a service member is scheduled for deployment, on leave from deployment, or returning from deployment outside the United States. In practical terms, it adds these circumstances to the list of reasons a student may miss school without being treated as truant, while leaving the rest of the attendance framework in place.
The bill operates by changing § 22.1-254 of the Code of Virginia, which governs compulsory attendance, excuses, and waivers. Because that section already contains mandatory and permissive excusal categories, HB653 expands the grounds on which school boards must excuse absences. The measure is aimed at ensuring students can participate in important family and military events without academic or attendance penalties, and it likely requires school divisions to update attendance policies and procedures to recognize the new excused-absence categories.
HB653 directly amends § 22.1-254 of the Code of Virginia, the state’s core compulsory attendance statute for public and private school-age children. Its legal effect is to broaden the list of excused absences that school boards must honor, adding family visitation and specified military deployment-related circumstances to the attendance exceptions already recognized under state law. School divisions will need to align local attendance policies with the amended statute, and affected parties include students, parents, school boards, and military families.
The available context suggests the bill was received favorably, as reflected by its enactment into Chapter 193 and lack of recorded opposition in the provided materials. The measure appears consistent with a broadly sympathetic policy goal: reducing attendance penalties for students facing significant family and military-related events. No committee transcript or vote record is provided, so there is no evidence here of organized opposition or divided sentiment.
No specific points of contention are documented in the provided materials. Potential areas of debate in a bill like this would typically involve how broadly “immediate family members” is defined, what documentation schools may require, and whether the new excusal categories could be applied consistently across divisions. However, the record supplied here does not show any identified opponents, amendments, or disputed provisions.