A Lesson on the Law for Truants, Parents

It was time to lay down the law: Either the boy goes to school or the family goes before a judge.

The Los Angeles police officers, a deputy district attorney and assorted county and school district officials were ready to let Ruben and his mother have it. The boy, who missed 41 days of fifth grade this year, must return to school.

Call it the truancy court of last resort. On any day, 30,000 Los Angeles Unified School District students are absent from school, and those without legitimate reasons cost the district about $80 million a year. The most extreme cases land here, before a state-mandated school attendance review board.

While the truancy meetings are private, panel members and parents recently allowed a Times reporter to attend an afternoon session and review confidential school records. The Times chose to identify the family members by their first names only.

Despite the review board’s intention to get tough with Ruben, when the time came for the family to face hard questions, the members of the board softened. The boy was weeping and his mother was pleading.

She explained that she tried to make Ruben attend school but that she could not force him. “I’m trying to get all my boys to school,” she said, her eyes wide as she nervously surveyed the imposing panel. “There’s no excuse for them--they just didn’t want to go.”

Jay Grobeson, a deputy district attorney--who had been ready 15 minutes earlier to threaten the family with court action--changed his tone. “This meeting is a last chance for you so you never have to step foot inside a courtroom,” Grobeson said, addressing Ruben. “All you have to do is go to school and try. The law says you guys have to go to school and the law says your mom has to send you to school. I don’t want to make you cry and I don’t want to embarrass you, but I want you to understand.”

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The panels meet weekly and hear the worst stories: The San Fernando Valley second-grader who had not been to school in 60 days and who was tardy 39 times. The 12-year-old from the Valley who skipped 70 days of school last year. The 10th-grader from East Los Angeles who ditched 65 days of school and who was late 40 times.

Children face the review board after teachers and school officials admit defeat, sometimes after lengthy counseling sessions. It took years for the system to finally catch up with Ruben. According to his school records, the boy has missed 170 school days since kindergarten--just 10 days short of an entire school year.

In the bureaucratic language of the truancy form, the boy’s “non-attendance (was) due to parental inability to send student to school.”

Under California’s compulsory education law, parents must send children ages 6 to 18 to school unless the student has passed a state test for early graduation. A related law provides for making students under 18 wards of the court for habitual truancy and another law makes it a crime for adults to contribute to the delinquency of a minor--a statute prosecutors are using more often in truancy cases.

Before his meeting with the panel, Ruben’s counselor, Raphael Confortes, explained that the boy tells his mother that he is sick or that he just does not want to get out of bed. “They fight every morning,” Confortes said. “He doesn’t want to get up. His older brother has similar problems. I’ve been there and seen it--they just fight to stay home and she usually lets them.”

The panel members, meeting in an East Los Angeles school district office, said Ruben’s mother probably needs to gain more control over her boys and order them to school. The case, they said, was typical of the truancy cases they see: single, working mothers with strong-willed children who are controlling their families. They simply are not going to school because no one is strong enough to push or encourage them.

And once the students are truant for a long period, it is often hard for them to return. They have fallen behind both academically and socially, their counselors say.

The review boards also evaluate the whole family--not just the truant child. It is not uncommon, for example, for the panels to discuss siblings and require counseling or tutoring programs for them as well.

That was evident when the review board called the case of Julio, a chronically absent 11-year-old. The fifth-grader skipped 40 days of school this year, bringing his total to 273 missed school days since kindergarten.

The boy, whose school records indicate that he reads at the first-grade level and does math at the third-grade level, had intensive meetings with his counselor over seven weeks. The counselor, Marcia Cunha, said she talked to the boy in blunt terms.

“We had a large conference with his family and I told him he could ultimately be removed from his home and placed into a foster home,” she said. “That really set in his mind.”

Julio’s attendance improved.

But in reading Julio’s file, the panel members noticed that his sister, Laura, had an even worse attendance problem. The eighth-grader skipped more than 100 days of school this year.

Without warning, the panel turned to the girl. “Laura, why aren’t you going to school?” said one review board member “It’s the law that you have to go to school.”

Sitting hunched over, her head down and her voice barely audible, Laura said she just did not like school. “Every year, they teach the same things, the same things,” she said. “It’s boring.”

Their mother said Laura often complained of health problems that kept her home from school. The mother also said that she knew that the two children were not going to school while she worked cleaning houses but that she was unable to reverse the pattern.

In Julio’s file, the counselor had written: “Mom works full-time and does not feel it is her responsibility to get Julio to school every day.”

Additionally, the family had moved three times in the year--a situation the mother acknowledged was probably not good for her children. “With all the changes, they became rebellious and not wanting to go to school,” she said.

Panel members, apparently disbelieving the extent of the girl’s health problems, told her mother to either take Laura to the doctor and get medical notes or encourage her to see the school nurse.

Laura gave one-word answers and appeared uninterested in the proceedings. It was then that Los Angeles Police Officer Armando Romero took over. “I can tell from your body language that you don’t care about this, but I’m going to tell you something: This is real important,” Romero said, his voice calm and steady. “We’re going to take you in front of a judge if you don’t start attending school. It’s because of you and your brother that we are all here. I’d be embarrassed if I were you, and you look like you don’t care.”

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In the end, most parents and their children sign a contract saying they will attend school and counseling sessions, among other things. The panel ultimately had Laura sign a contract stating that she would regularly attend school. Her mother was required to attend parenting classes and to discuss Laura’s absenteeism with her counselor to find programs and activities for her. Julio was required to continue going to school.

When parents or students do not live up to the terms of the contracts, the families can be brought back to a review board hearing and then sent to the district attorney’s office for possible prosecution.

Of the 77 truancy cases that went to court last year, most resulted in suspended fines without jail time for parents or their children. Other cases were dismissed or the students were put on probation for other, unrelated offenses, officials said.

“I think the penalties are very, very lenient . . . and many of the judges are looking for any way possible of getting rid of these cases,” said Tom Higgins, the head Los Angeles County deputy district attorney in the Juvenile Division, who runs a program in 19 county schools aimed at curbing truancy. “If a kid’s been missing school extensively and then has attended for two weeks, the judges say, ‘OK, things are getting better. Dismissed.’ ”

School district officials are even more blunt. “The system needs to work better and the laws need more teeth,” said Nathana Schooler, who oversees the elementary school attendance counselors. “It is always that we have to make an extreme, concerted effort to make the system work.”

Commissioner Jack Gold, who says he hears several truancy cases a year in San Fernando Valley Juvenile Court, said he believes the problem needs to be addressed before the case ever gets to court.

“With all the heavy crimes coming through here--robbery, murder--these are real cumbersome cases to deal with,” Gold said. “Often, it comes down to how do you make the mother responsible for the kid? She drops the kid off at school, she goes to work and the kid leaves school. Who’s fault is that?”

For Ruben and his mother, the review board process helped. The boys are regularly attending school and have been late just a few times in the past couple of weeks.

“I felt like I was in court,” Ruben’s mother said after the board meeting. “It was scary. There were all these adults in front of me. But what they said was true: you have to go to school and finish.”

“No question, it worked,” Confortes said of Ruben’s hearing. “Their attendance has improved. The mother was given certain directions and she’s following them.”

Costly Truants The Los Angeles Unified School District lost about $80 million last year because of unexcused student absences. The district receives state funds for students whose absences are excused, such as for illness or family emergencies. The district is not paid when students do not have valid excuses.

Students with high absenteeism are sent to hearings with state-mandated school attendance review boards, the final step before cases go to a hearing with the district attorney’s office. Cases then are sent to court if charges are filed.

For 1992-93, the following numbers of students attended review board hearings:

* Elementary school: 263

* Middle school: 101

* High school: 123

For the same year, the following numbers of students attended hearings with the district attorney’s office:

* Elementary school: 78

* Middle school: 84

* High school: 60

The following numbers of students had charges filed against them and/or their parents and went to court:

* Elementary school: 25

* Middle school: 27

* High school: 25

Source: Los Angeles Unified School District