Truancy issues lead to increased monitoring of attendance (10/09)

By Elizabeth Trujillo

Oct. 23, 2009

The city’s district attorney’s office and the school district are focusing more intensely on reducing high school truancy by working with parents, with legal consequences for repeat offenders.
Criminal prosecution and increased parent involvement have helped to decrease the overall number of truants district-wide. However, according to the DA’s office, efforts to reduce truancy have been successful with elementary and middle school students, while absenteeism in high school students has been significantly harder to deal with. The San Francisco Unified School District data says that from the ’07-’08 school year to the ’08-’09 school year the number of truants in lower schools has decreased, by 17.3 percent in elementary schools, 5.3 percent in middle schools and 24.3 percent in K-8 combination schools. According to San Francisco’s assistant district attorney Katy Miller, “Older kids have much more free will. In a lot of cases it’s their decision.”

To offset elementary and middle school students’ truancy, SFUSD’s Student Attendance Review Board (SARB) or the DA go directly to parents as they generally have more control over their children in their younger years. But the DA has to take a different approach with high schoolers. “We know we can’t take a one-size fits all approach,” Miller said. “We have a strategy aimed at working with (high school) kids and their parents together.”

Earlier efforts to regulate attendance have included phone calls home, meetings with parents and students and, as a last resort, legal action. Truants and their parents may be legally punished. In the beginning of the school year, SFUSD students received a letter from the DA through their school registry for their parents. Truants that were involved with SARB were sent another notification saying that the DA planned to follow up, according to Miller.

The parent-student handbook for the SFUSD states that when a student is absent, the school will call their home to notify the families of the absence, then if unexcused absences persist, a letter of truancy is sent to parents. Persistent calls home from the school and several more notices of truancy and habitual truancy are sent home if the student neglects to come to school. If the student’s absenteeism becomes habitual, the student and their parents are referred for a meeting with SARB and, if necessary, a district attorney. There they are informed of the legal consequences of chronic truancy — 20 or more absences.

Both parents and students face possible legal consequences. If parents are taken to court and charged for neglecting their child’s education, which violates the California penal code 272, they can face a fine of up to $2,500 and one year in jail. As of January 2009, the DA has prosecuted 20 elementary and middle school parents.

Students also run the risk of possible legal action. They may have to pay a fine up to $100, do 20-40 hours of community service, and possibly have their driver’s licenses suspended, which remains on their record until they reach 25 years of age. “We haven’t done that up to date but we can, so people should be on notice,” Miller said.

Parents play a large role in helping absentee numbers decline. “Parents have the most important basic influence; they have more of a right to deal with students at home, but at school, teachers and staff take over those rights in lieu of parents,” dean of students Ray Cordoba said. “We back up the parents but at the same time, they have to back us up.”

Many do just that by attending SARB meetings and truancy assemblies by the DA’s office with their truant children, getting educated on policies and the law and helping to make sure their children go to school. However, “Some parents get upset because they thought their students went to school when they actually walked away after being dropped off,” SFUSD’s Stay in School Coalition coordinator Keith Choy said. “Some say ‘I can’t control my kids’.”

The SARB and DA’s office try to avoid taking parents to court. “The last thing we would want to do is take them to court,” Miller said. “It’s a last resort.” To avoid legal interference, community-based organizations, such as the Bayview YMCA-based Center for Academic Re-Entry and Empowerment (CARE), work with the DA’s office and SFUSD to reach out to truant students and get them back into school.

Efforts in reducing truancy are not focused on punishing students and their parents. The goal of these truancy policies is to improve public safety and to educate students and parents that it is the law for students to be in school. “If kids aren’t in school they are more likely to become victims and perpetrators of crime,” Miller said. “We want the best for our communities and we want young people to have a positive future.”

Reducing truancy greatly aids students. When students attend school regularly, “They don’t fall so far behind,” Choy said. “Sometimes students have a hard time adjusting to high school from middle school, but at school there is extra help like clubs and teams; there are more things to enrich their education.”

Truancy is not only affecting those who are frequently absent and their guardians, but it also affects each school’s funding. Attendance figures determine the funds that the school district gets. “If kids aren’t in school it costs us money as well as the school district,” Harris said. According to a recent article from The Examiner (www.examiner.com), one absence costs the SFUSD about $42 and absenteeism costs the school district approximately $5 million annually. San Francisco has more students skipping school than the California averages. According to the California Department of Education in the 2007-’08 school year, California’s truancy rate was 25.7 percent while SFUSD’s truancy rate was 28.7 percent.

Before Harris began enforcing truancy policies, truancy wasn’t as closely monitored. “There weren’t very good efforts to reduce truancy years ago,” Choy said. “We’re really trying a lot harder to get into contact with students and parents.”

While the consequences of truancy may seem extreme, other districts have approached absenteeism with more intensity. In Los Angeles, police officers are quick to give out truancy tickets that fine students starting from $250. “We try to keep meetings in school district buildings or in wellness centers,” Choy said.

Efforts will continue in hopes that the district, the DA, the communities and parents will see a drop in chronic high school truancy, as with the success of the younger SFUSD students. “[Attendance] is a critical step towards long-term success and employment,” Miller said. “We also know the more graduates we have, the safer our communities will be.”