Ohio has updated how districts address student attendance, and an important state data window opens next week that affects Holmes County schools. The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce will accept Final Correction Opportunities requests for graduation and graduate cohort data from October 13 to October 24 for the 2025 school year. For approved requests, corrected EMIS data must be submitted by November 7.

These corrections affect what the state reports for districts and cohorts. The attendance framework changed this year through House Bill 96. The state’s new Attendance Guidance clarifies that students who are habitually truant are no longer required to have an absence intervention team or plan. Instead, districts must use teams to support early intervention for chronic absenteeism, and every district must adopt a policy addressing chronic absenteeism no later than August 1, 2026. For families in East Holmes and West Holmes, this means the school-level process you encounter when absences begin to add up may look different this year, and how attendance is recorded at the state level has been updated.

The state also clarified what attendance information districts must report. As of September 30, 2025, districts do not report dates of attendance notifications to families or the existence of absence intervention plans. The EMIS elements used to track truancy still exist. The Student Truancy and Excessive Absence FT record remains part of the EMIS Manual and was revised in the July 1, 2025 update.

Districts should ensure their reporting aligns with the current manual during the correction window. If you have a senior or a student whose status was recently updated, ask your school counselor how the October 13 to October 24 window relates to graduation and cohort data and whether any corrections are planned. For local governance context, West Holmes lists a board meeting on October 20 at Millersburg Elementary, which is a good checkpoint for any discussion items on attendance communication.

East Holmes notes the board typically meets on the third Friday of each month at 7:30 a.m.

Agendas were not posted for those specific discussions at publication, so I do not know the exact dates when policy updates will be considered. The next step will be to check each district’s board agenda and ask superintendents how policy revisions will be communicated to families. Sources: Ohio Department of Education and Workforce EMIS Updates and Final Correction Opportunities pages, 2025 Attendance Guidance, Ohio School Boards Association legal blog, EMIS Manual, and district websites.