ANAHEIM : Retirees Try Pesuasion on Truants

The 13-year-old girl twisted her hair and fidgeted in her seat as she told truant officer Tom Rodgers that she had overslept and decided to stay home to avoid a confrontation at the attendance office.

“Now you know, after four absences, what’ll happen,” Rodgers began, after patiently listening to a story he had obviously heard many times before. Laura, an eighth-grader at an Anaheim junior high school, has already been in trouble for smoking on campus and for another unexcused absence.

Her story is mild compared to some Rodgers has heard.

Rodgers, a 70-year-old former teacher for the Anaheim Union High School District, is among six retirees the district employs to coax truant students back into junior high or high school classes.

Each workday, they set out individually with the home addresses of chronic truants. Sometimes actually finding the students is the hardest part, Rodgers said. Often, the addresses the students have given lead to vacant lots.

Once they find the teen-agers, the officers must become patient listeners and persuasive counselors, he said. “The whole objective for me is to get the student talking.”

Jim Smokov, 67, a truant officer for seven years, agreed: “I think sometimes they just need to know that somebody is on their side--that not everybody is against them.”

Many of the teens say they feel threatened by gangs in their neighborhoods and schools. Some are addicted to drugs. Others are pregnant.

Some older teens must contribute to the family income, and others need to care for siblings while parents work. Some live in cramped motel rooms, with no place to study.

And some, such as one 16-year-old girl who was in tears after talking with Rodgers, think that they have simply played hooky too many times to catch up.

For nearly every imaginable situation the counselors find, the district can offer some schooling alternative.

The program began in 1982 as an early retirement incentive for district employees. Since then it has transformed into something of a model program, with impressive results.

Statistics from August show that the retirees retrieved 538 of the 854 students in the district’s 18 schools who had failed to register for classes, said Lorraine Kobett, director of student services for the district.

When school opened last fall, they encouraged 198 of the 280 who had failed to attend the first week of courses to start school, she said.

The district also retrieved $1.9 million in otherwise-lost funding this year, Kobett said, because the state pays for each student in school.

The program costs the district about $35,000 annually, she said. The truant officers are paid $100 a day, which includes such expenses as gasoline and car maintenance.

Smokov and Rodgers are among the most active seniors in the program, each working 75 of the 180 school days a year and visiting up to 20 students a day.

Rodgers, who carries a briefcase stuffed with pamphlets in both English and Spanish about alternative courses offered through the district, said the key to success is just to listen and offer guidance.

“I love young people, and I tell them, ‘If you got yourself backed into a corner, I’ll go with you and help you get back,’ ” he said.