Taft Student Tries to Ditch a Bad Habit

Master ditcher Jarid Mels stashes his skateboard in his locker, finally and firmly resolving to attend all of his classes.

He lasts almost five hours.

With two periods to go, Jarid passes an open door and escapes to freedom. “I’m a success,” he said, en route to a bagel shop, proud he attended four of his six classes.

The other two? Well, “I’m going to fail them anyway,” he said.

The 15-year-old skateboarder with a penchant for baseball caps and silver hoop earrings exemplifies the seductive grip of truancy--a nearly incurable habit for thousands of students citywide who are falling through the educational cracks.

There is hope for Jarid. Shepherded by a mother who wants him to graduate, a girlfriend who wants him in class and an English teacher who sees potential, the Taft High School freshman is trying to reverse a pattern of truancy that began when he was in junior high school.

Jarid illustrates the delicate balance of parent and school intervention--and the will to change--needed for reform, experts say.

“I put more effort into ditching than going to school,” he said. “Now I’m thinking, why do that? Why not just put that into school? Just get it over with.”

This semester Jarid skipped 43 days of reading class and 35 days of English. He’s skipped 50 periods of math. He would show up for school and then get frustrated by the work or other students, and he’d grab his skateboard and go.

But ditching caught up with Jarid. His mother and girlfriend finally got on him.

English teacher Chris Tyler said Jarid needs to know that someone at school cares enough to keep track of his attendance. She has taken up that job.

“I keep telling him I missed him, that he’s doing a good job and to keep it up,” Tyler said. “He’s on that borderline. You just hate to see them fail--especially when they’re bright.”

So on a clear day in May, Jarid began his rocky start at reform.

His ditching days are not easy to give up. Besides his freedom, Jarid must surrender his reputation as an accomplished truant, which had earned him respect among a wide group of taggers, pot-smokers and other contemporary rebels.

“I’m a master at ditching,” Jarid said. ‘It’s not something to be proud of, but I can always just get away.”

These days, he said, glumly: “They’re calling me ‘schoolboy.’ ”

Jarid’s mother, Tracey Resnick, said she often did not find out about her son’s failure to attend school until the boy skipped several times.

“If they don’t let me know before it gets out of hand, I can’t do anything,” she said. “How do I reprimand him for that? He’s already gotten away with it.”

But Jarid said he deliberately kept his mother ignorant, diverting phone calls and letters from the school.

Since discovering her son’s truancy, Resnick said she has resorted to tough measures. She took away her son’s skateboard and threatened to send him to live with his father in Nevada.

“I had to physically take things away from him,” said his mom, who dropped out of high school at age 16 when she became pregnant with Jarid.

Said Jarid, “My mom really flamed me, dude.”

His girlfriend, Heidi Applegarth, a strawberry-blond freshman with good grades and near-perfect attendance, also plays a role.

During one lunch period, Jarid looked longingly toward the gate as two friends hopped the fence. “You can’t go, you just can’t,” Heidi said. That period, he didn’t.

Along with those changes at home, efforts by Heidi, Tyler and others finally began to take hold.

“I think my teachers really want to help me,” Jarid said. “They know I’m just a kid.”

He paused, adding: “And, you know, it’s way boring out here.”