Schools Threaten: Ditch Class, Go to Jail

Habitual truants could be sentenced to as many as five days in Juvenile Hall under a program informally endorsed by the Centinela Valley Union High School District Board of Trustees.

Four of the trustees said last month that they favor the program, which was created by Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner and will be presented for formal approval at the board’s meeting June 13. The program would take effect in September.

“I hope something will click so there will be a turnaround” in the truancy problem, said Trustee Ruth Morales. “Even if the statistics change just a little bit, I think it’s a step in the right direction.”

About 10% of the district’s 6,100 high school students merit special counseling and programs outside the regular classroom because of serious truancy problems, Supt. McKinley M. Nash said.

Only students with the most intractable problems--1% or fewer--would be likely to be referred for possible incarceration under the district attorney’s new Truancy Mediation Program, Nash said.

Parents Face Prosecution

In addition to the student penalties in the program, parents would face prosecution if they are found to be responsible for their children’s excessive absences--when, for example, they repeatedly write false excuses or keep a teen-ager home to baby-sit. A first-time infraction by a parent could carry a fine of up to $100 or special counseling; the most serious misdemeanor offense could mean a $500 fine and 25 days in jail.

The district attorney would be called in only after counseling and other school truancy programs had been tried without success, according to Adalbert T. Botello, chief deputy of the district attorney’s juvenile division in Inglewood, who spoke to the school board.

Centinela Valley is the first school district in the South Bay to hear a formal presentation on the new countywide program, Botello said. An official in the district attorney’s office said that 160 truants have been referred to the program countywide, though she was unable to say which school districts the students attended. None of the students have yet been sent to Juvenile Hall.

Nash praised the program, which provides stiff penalties to deter students from chronic truancy.

He said the Centinela Valley district’s overall dropout rate is less than 14%, compared to 37% statewide, partly because of its intensive efforts to deter truancy. But the district wants to reduce truancy even further, he said.

Link to Achievement

In the first semester of the present school year, 9% of Hawthorne High School students were picked up as truants. The rate was 12% at Leuzinger High School, Nash said. Each school has an enrollment of about 2,700. The remainder of students in the district attend Lloyde High School, an alternative education program for students who have difficulties in the regular program.

District officials hope the program will have a positive effect on learning by keeping more students in school, Nash said.

The program is also expected to reduce gang activity and daytime crimes committed by truants in Hawthorne, Lawndale and Lennox, Nash said.

Reiner, in unveiling the program in February, said law enforcement agencies have found that habitual truancy “is the No. 1 precursor of ultimately serious criminal behavior.”

“If you can clear the streets of truants, you can dramatically reduce daytime residential burglaries,” he said. Up to two-thirds of such crimes are committed by truants, he said.

To the Board of Trustees, Deputy Dist. Atty. Leslie Hanke described how California educators and law enforcement officials have grown increasingly frustrated with the state’s truancy problem since 1975.

That year, the Legislature enacted a law limiting the power of the juvenile courts to incarcerate habitual truants and juvenile status offenders, those who commit an offense that would not be a crime if committed by an adult, such as curfew violations.

Review Board Created

As a result, she said, the district attorney’s office “got out of the business” of prosecuting habitual truants. Local School Attendance Review Boards were created to take over the work previously handled by the juvenile courts. These boards, however, had no authority to compel students to attend school, she said.

A 1988 state Supreme Court ruling restored the district attorney’s authority to incarcerate habitual truants for up to five days when found in contempt of court, for such things as violating an order to attend school or counseling.

The emphasis will be on returning youngsters to school, not keeping them in custody, Hanke said. “Our purpose is not to incarcerate truants, but to assist in returning kids to school,” she said.

At the June 13 meeting, Nash will discuss existing truancy programs that would have to be tried before the district would refer a case to the district attorney.

After last month’s presentation, Botello and Hanke fielded questions asked by teen-age students from a night-school government class who attended the board meeting at Nash’s request.

The students, some of whom were in night school to complete classes they missed because of truancy, listened attentively.

They were particularly concerned about whether missing a single class or a single day would trigger the penalties and were assured that the district attorney would be consulted only as a last resort.

A couple of students also objected to the penalties for parents, saying high-school students, not parents, should be held responsible. Hanke said parents would only be prosecuted when it can be shown that they were directly responsible for allowing children to remain out of school.