Facing Truancy : District Uses Centers to Urge Students Who Stray to Stay in School

The three teen-agers sat on brown chairs in the locker room of the Glassell Park swimming pool. The hour was approaching noon on a school day. The youths were hungry and restless. But they had no choice but to wait.

About 9 that morning, Los Angeles police officers had brought in Margaret, 13, and Luisa, 14. About 11:30, police brought Tommy to the echoing room. Tommy was already warming up his excuse. Those are not the students’ real names.

“I was going home,” Tommy said, and the two girls giggled. The two counselors in the room glanced at each other knowingly. They had heard that one too many times.

There was no escape. The youths were in for several hours of boredom and unwanted adult company, the consequence of being truant.

That was the scene at one of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s 11 Operation Stay in School (OSIS) centers one recent morning.

The OSIS centers serve as drop-off points for truants picked up on the streets by police officers who patrol in special “juvenile cars.” The counselors use gentle persuasion along with their limited legal powers to try to turn young people away from truancy.

Although California law requires children ages 6 to 17 to attend school, truancy itself is not a crime and students cannot be arrested merely for being out of school. However, the state Education Code allows school officials and police officers to keep truant students in custody during school hours until a parent or guardian can retrieve them.

Those picked up in the Northeast area of the Los Angeles school district are brought to the OSIS center in Glassell Park, which opens each fall in the pool house after the end of the swimming season. In its first week, beginning Oct. 16, the center processed 36 juveniles, counselor Karen Crowl said.

The center is staffed by Crowl and an aide, Rudy Martinez, who have worked together since 1979, when the program was housed at the Highland Park pool. That building was damaged by fire in 1987, and the counselors moved the program to the Glassell Park Recreation Center at 3650 Verdugo Road.

When truants are brought in, the counselors try to contact their parents to come pick them up. If a parent cannot be reached, a counselor returns the student to school, Crowl said. The counselors also watch for signs of child abuse, which they report to authorities.

While this day’s students waited to be picked up or taken back to school, Martinez bantered with them. He asked each one general questions about what they were doing when they were picked up, how they get to school and where their parents work. Then Martinez began targeting more specific problems that the students’ schools might have told him about, such as frequently missing classes, fighting or shoplifting.

Out of earshot of the truants, Martinez said: “Most of them blame the school and not themselves when they get into trouble. I like to try to help the kids straighten themselves out.”

Los Angeles Police Detective Doug Evans said police support the truancy program because, besides keeping students in class, it has helped reduce daylight crime near schools.

Juveniles who habitually ditch school often look for opportunities to make trouble, and “anything taking them off the streets helps,” Evans said.

At the Glassell Park OSIS center, Crowl and Martinez watch 12 to 15 truants during an average day. Officers find the youths either by seeing them on the streets or by hearing reports of loud daytime “ditching parties” from complaining neighbors, Crowl said.

“We have gotten 16 kids all at once from a ditching party,” she said.

Griffith Park and the Glendale Galleria are among the hot spots for truant students to gather. During the 1988-89 school year, the Glassell Park center processed 952 truants, according to a Los Angeles school district spokeswoman.

“Most of the time, the parents don’t realize the student’s attendance is much worse than they think,” Crowl said.

Crowl said OSIS is most effective for youths who are not yet habitually truant.

“For some kids, all it takes is to be picked up by the police that one time,” Crowl said. “They tried it once, and they were caught.”

Of the 14,353 truants processed by the district’s 11 centers during the 1988-89 school year, only 3% were picked up more than once for being truant, said a spokeswoman for OSIS’ downtown office.

“They’re the kids with parents less likely to come pick them up, “ said Crowl, referring to those who are repeatedly truant.

Margaret is one such “hard-core truant,” Martinez said.

When encountered at the Glassell Park center last month, it was the sixth time she had been picked up for truancy and the second time that she had been taken to Glassell Park. A phone call to Eagle Rock Junior High School revealed that she had not been in school for three weeks.

Even though Margaret’s mother calls her school to check up on her at the request of her school counselors, Margaret’s attendance has not improved. “I never went last year,” she said.

When Martinez called Margaret’s mother to tell her that Margaret had been picked up for truancy again, her mother told him that her daughter should be sent home with her friend Luisa’s mother instead.

In response to questions from Martinez, Margaret said that her mother worked in a department store and that her father was in prison. She took from her purse a birthday card that she said her father sent her recently and proudly showed off a photograph of him standing next to a high fence.

“It’s the only picture I have of him,” Margaret said. “I’m closer to my dad than my mom.”

Margaret said her mother had yelled at her for not going to school before but that she would run away if her mother tried to punish her. She and Luisa were given “opportunity transfers” from another school, meaning that they had been in trouble at their home school.

When they were transferred to Eagle Rock, they had to sign an agreement saying they would attend school regularly and, if caught ditching, would be transferred to their former school, Martinez said.

For some youths, an opportunity transfer to another school is all they need to go straight, Crowl said. “A different atmosphere, a different crowd might do the trick,” he said. “For others, it has no effect on them.”

Different schools have different ways of dealing with truants, she said. Irving Junior High School in Glassell Park will not allow truant youths to return until their parents come in to discuss the child’s behavior. Other schools, such as Benjamin Franklin High School in Highland Park, hold the students in detention after school.

Jan Avallone, an assistant principal at Franklin, said the school’s attendance office requires the student to make up the class time that was missed by doing homework during after-school detention. In addition, the school insists that one of the student’s parents come in for a conference with the dean.

“The school is there to support the parents,” Avallone said. “Sometimes they know their child is a truant, yet they don’t know what to do about it. We try to offer suggestions as to how they can penalize the students at home while we penalize the students at school. We’ll say take the TV away, don’t give him any money, take the radio away.”

By noon, Martinez had transported Tommy back to Franklin High School because his parents could not be reached. Back at school, he would be ordered to attend detention to make up the time he missed while truant.

As for the girls, Luisa’s mother came about 1 p.m. to take Luisa and Margaret home. Luisa grew silent and her smile disappeared at the sight of her mother’s grim face.

Two weeks later, Crowl said Eagle Rock had given the girls a second chance and given them permission to come back.

The school also told her that Luisa and Margaret had not attended classes for 11 days.