Truancy Program Made Permanent

Truants beware: You can go to school, or you can go to jail.

A year-old pilot program to prosecute serious truancy cases through the Ventura County district attorney’s office was made permanent this week.

Under the program, children who repeatedly skip school and parents who don’t send them face contempt-of-court charges and a possible jail sentence.

On Tuesday, an eighth-grader from the Conejo Valley Unified School District was arraigned on the truancy charge after missing 30 days of school since September without valid excuses, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Saundra T. Brewer.

The girl, who has denied the charge, faces a May 2 hearing at which a juvenile judge could order her to attend school. If she does not, the judge could declare her a ward of the state or direct her to serve five days in custody at a juvenile detention facility. No action has been taken against the mother.

Deputy Dist. Atty. J. Eric Bond said any parent who refuses to send a child to school faces a contempt-of-court criminal citation and up to six months in jail for a second violation.

The case is an extreme one, Brewer said. Only one other case has gone to court under the district attorney’s program: In March, 1989, a chronically truant 12-year-old complied with a Juvenile Court order to attend school, which ended her prosecution, Brewer said.

The program focuses on younger truants because prosecutors believe that there is a greater likelihood of success at that age, Brewer said.

“The ramifications of a child not going to school at age 12 are very, very grave,” Brewer said. “There’s a very, very high correlation of delinquency with school attendance, and we want to try to do what we can to get a hand on these at-risk kids as soon as we can.”

Truancy is a constant problem, said Dr. Richard Morrison, who coordinates hearings on truancy cases by 13 review boards throughout the county. The boards hear individual cases, trying to determine why individual students miss school, and working with them and their parents to improve attendance.

Morrison said the boards hear about 1,000 truancy cases a year--about 1% of the county school population--involving students who are out of school for at least three days per year without valid excuses.

“But it takes a lot more than three” for a student to be called before a Student Attendance Review Board, Morrison said.

The parent of any child with more than three unexcused absences receives a letter from school officials. If the truancy continues, the parent and child are called before one of the review boards to discuss the truancy problem.

If the notices are ignored, the case is referred to a countywide review board, which then can forward the case to the district attorney’s office, Brewer said.

Prosecutors then send a warning letter. If that is ignored, a decision may be made to prosecute.

Before the prosecutor’s program, the schools could “threaten to bring you into court, but it just wasn’t enough of a deterrent,” Brewer said.

“We’ve been pleased with the support from the D.A.,” said William Seaver, superintendent of the Conejo Valley Unified School District. “Most of the times, parents respond.”

“The bottom line is we’ve been dealing with hardened habitual criminals at the other end,” said John Burton, president of the California Assn. of Supervisors of Child Welfare and Attendance. “If we get involved with them in junior high school, we’re in a better position to help them with their educational problems.”

Times staff writer Adrianne Goodman contributed to this article.