Conversation : A Team Approach to End Truancy

People don’t realize the extent to which truancy decreases academic achievement. But before you can have achievement, you first have to have the kids in school. Four years ago, we had 100 truancies a month. Some kids just skipped out for a few periods, some for three or five days and some were chronic. To keep these kids in school, we knew we had to do something to get hold of the parents. So our former principal, Raul Moreno, and former assistant principal, James Alther, developed the program.

Most schools have a computer that calls the home and keeps calling till someone picks up. But then it just blurts out its message, “Your son/daughter was absent from school today. Please call the attendance office.” Kids aren’t stupid. They know those calls go out between 6 and 9 p.m. So they pick up the phone and they think, “OK, great, that’s the end of that deal.”

We do it differently. We have real live people, four clerks, who start calling as soon as we get our homeroom attendance. We call home or work. The parents say, “Well, I sent them to school,” so we check, and if the kid’s not there, the parents either have to bring him in or make assurances that he will come in the next day with a note saying they know what’s going on. If the kid returns on his own, we hold him in the office for as long as it takes to make parental contact, making it very inconvenient for the youngster.

If he’s out a lot or doesn’t come back at all, we notify the parents and they have to bring him in personally and we have a conference right then and there. So, unless he’s a runaway, he’s going to wind up going home with parents who know he’s never at school. Once kids are confronted with that, it minimizes the chance of a second truancy, because they know their parents will have to bring them in, and 90% of kids really don’t want their parents at school.

Seniors can be a problem because they think it’s their last year and get lazy about coming. So at the beginning of the year, each senior and his parents sign a contract saying that with X number of truant days, there’s a parent conference. At the conference, the student is told he will lose whatever event is upcoming, a dance or whatever. It can go to the point where he will lose graduation if he continues to be truant, and no kid wants to lose that.

Another thing you have to do is create a team effort between the school and the parents. During the conference, you start with, What do we want for the youngster? Then it’s, OK, this is what the school can do. What can you do at home? Everything is we. For example, we tell them, we provide a math class, and when they get home, it’s your responsibility to give them half an hour’s homework supervision.

We see changes in all areas. After kids start building this thing where they say, “OK, I’m coming to school, and it took me four weeks to see the results of better marks,” they start building longer-range goals. That’s when they start thinking that there’s more than high school and start thinking toward college or trade school. And that makes for larger percentages that go on to post-secondary education.

Increases in self-esteem come with regular attendance and better marks. When self-esteem goes up, relationships with parents usually get better. We’ve even noticed better self-esteem in parents, since their kids are in school and making better grades, and they have been part of it.

Everything that’s done by our faculty, clerks and staff is above and beyond their duties. That’s why most schools don’t do this. After the program started, we were No. 1 in attendance in the city. Then Bell High School started using this program, and now they’re No. 1. We’re trying to get our record back. Kids need to know there’s someone who cares, who lets them know they’re wanted in the classroom.