Mississippi is the state in this series where the thing you came here to do does not exist. There is no withdrawal step. The compulsory attendance statute never asks a parent to withdraw a child, to give notice of leaving, or to tell the district anything at all.
What it asks for is one piece of paper, and it is pointed somewhere most families never think to look: not at the school, not at the district office, but at the school attendance officer for the county where the child lives.
The certificate of enrollment shall be returned to the school attendance officer where the child resides on or before September 15 of each year.
Mississippi Code Annotated § 37-13-91(3)
Read that again for what it does not say. It does not say tell the principal. It does not say file with the district. It names a person, in the county where your child sleeps, and a date. That is the whole obligation, and a family who has done it has done what Mississippi asks.
Why the withdrawal letter is the wrong worry
Almost every other state in this series has an action aimed at the school you are leaving. New Jersey takes a letter. Arizona takes an affidavit, filed with the county. New York wants an individualised instruction plan. Kentucky puts the notice on the new school and only hands it back to you in writing.
Mississippi does none of that, and the consequence is quietly serious. A family that writes a careful withdrawal letter has done something the law does not require, and may still not have done the one thing it does. The letter is courtesy, and courtesy is worth extending. The certificate is the law.
So send the letter if you want the school to have a clean record and a forwarding address for the transcript. Then go and do the actual filing, which is a different piece of paper handed to a different person.
The certificate is not yours to design
Subsection (3) puts the FORM of the certificate with the Office of Compulsory School Attendance Enforcement at the State Department of Education. There is a right piece of paper and your attendance officer has it. Ask for theirs rather than drafting your own, and you skip an argument you were never going to win.
What the certificate actually asks you for
Less than people fear. The statute lists what it must carry, and none of it is a curriculum plan, a test score, a teaching credential or a schedule:
- The child
Name, address, telephone number and date of birth. - The parent, guardian or custodian
Name, address and telephone number. - A simple description of the type of education the child is receiving
The statute’s own word is simple. It is a description, not a submission for approval. - A signature and a date
The parent, guardian or custodian signs it. Where a nonpublic school is involved, its name and address go on as well. - Nothing else
No curriculum to approve, no test result, no teaching qualification and no schedule. If someone asks you for those to accept the certificate, ask which subsection of 37-13-91 they are reading from.
Notice what is absent. Mississippi does not ask you to prove anything about the education before it begins. The one qualifying phrase in the statute runs the other way, and it is aimed at people setting up a school to dodge the law rather than at families teaching children:
For the purposes of this subsection, a legitimate nonpublic school or legitimate home instruction program shall be those not operated or instituted for the purpose of avoiding or circumventing the compulsory attendance law.
Mississippi Code Annotated § 37-13-91(3)
What each state asks for, side by side
The clearest way to see what makes Mississippi different is to put it next to the states this series has already covered. The column that matters is the last one.
| State | What the parent files | Who receives it |
|---|---|---|
| New Jersey | Nothing is required | No one |
| Kentucky | Usually nothing; the school notifies | The local board, from the school |
| Arizona | An affidavit of intent | The county school superintendent |
| New York | An individualised instruction plan | The school district |
| Mississippi | A certificate of enrollment, every year by September 15 | The school attendance officer for the county where the child lives |
Four of those five point at the school system the child is leaving. Mississippi’s points at a county officer most families have never heard of, which is exactly why it gets missed.
Who this applies to, and when
Mississippi’s compulsory attendance law covers what the statute calls a compulsory-school-age child: one who has turned six on or before September 1 of that calendar year, and who has not yet turned seventeen on or before September 1. Below six and at seventeen, the compulsory duty is not engaged.
The deadline is September 15, each year, not once. A certificate is an annual thing, so the family that filed beautifully in one September and forgot the next is the ordinary case rather than a rare one. Put it in the calendar the day you file it.
If you have missed the date
This is the part worth reading twice, because the instinct it corrects is the one that causes the damage. Missing September 15 is not an instant violation. The attendance officer gives written notice of the noncompliance, and the statute then allows ten days to comply before there is a violation of the section.
Which means the worst thing a Mississippi family can do on realising they are late is go quiet. Ten days is a cure period, and a cure period only helps a family that answers the phone. Ring the attendance officer, ask for the certificate, send it back.
Not sure which of these applies to you?
Fifteen minutes on the phone sorts out what you actually owe, what you do not, and what the transcript needs to say. No record required to have the conversation, and deciding against it costs nothing.
Doing it in order
Find your county’s school attendance officer
They sit under the Office of Compulsory School Attendance Enforcement rather than under your local school, which is why the district switchboard is often the slow way to reach them. Start at the Department’s compulsory attendance office and ask for the officer covering the county where the child resides.
Ask that officer for the certificate of enrollment
Theirs, not one you have found online. The form is prescribed at state level and the officer receiving it is the person who knows the current version.
Request the transcript before you are off the roll
Records move most easily while a student is still enrolled. Ask for the full transcript and for course descriptions covering anything left half finished, and get the reply by email so you have it in writing.
Send the school a short courtesy letter
Not required by the statute, and still worth doing. It gives the school a date, a forwarding address for records, and a clean end to attendance questions nobody wants reopened in March.
File the certificate by September 15, and diarise the next one
Then keep a copy. The single most common gap is not the first year, it is the second, and a copy with a date on it settles most of what anybody asks later.
The courtesy letter, ready to send
Short is correct here. You are not asking permission and you are not required to explain a reason, so a letter that argues a case invites a conversation that has no purpose.
Dear [Principal’s name],
This letter is to confirm that [student full name], date of birth [DOB], currently enrolled in grade [grade] at [school], will be leaving the school effective [date]. Their education will continue under a home instruction program, and a certificate of enrollment will be filed with the school attendance officer for [county] County as required by Miss. Code Ann. § 37-13-91.
Please send a complete transcript, together with course descriptions for any course in progress, to [address / email].
Thank you for your help.
[Your name]
[Address]
[Telephone]
What we can and cannot tell you
High School of America is an accredited private school based in Florida, not a Mississippi school, and whether any particular enrolment satisfies Mississippi’s compulsory attendance requirement is a legal question about your household that we are not the right people to answer. What we can do is tell you plainly what the statute asks for, which is above, and point you at the text of section 37-13-91 so you can read the sentences yourself rather than take ours for it.
If you want a person to talk it through with, that is what the counselor call is for, and it is not a sales appointment. Bring whatever records you have, or none.
The wider picture for families weighing this sits on the requirements state by state, and if you are early enough to still be deciding, the three-route comparison weighs this against staying exactly where you are.