Garden Grove Will Not Seek Daytime Curfew

Satisfied with the success of an ongoing truancy prevention program, city officials have agreed not to pursue a formal daytime curfew ordinance.

Cities throughout Orange County have been considering daytime curfew ordinances at the request of county officials. So far, Seal Beach, La Habra and Buena Park have passed the laws, which allow police to issue citations to school-age children seen on the street during normal school hours.

Garden Grove officials said during a recent City Council meeting that the city’s Truancy Reduction Center, a joint effort between the Police Department and the Garden Grove Unified School District, is working to reduce truancy.

“We don’t need a daytime curfew. With the program we have, that [ordinance] isn’t necessary,” said Mayor Bruce A. Broadwater.

The program combines the efforts of police, district officials and Orange County Youth and Family Services in locating and counseling truants.

Lt. Kevin Raney, the Police Department’s representative in the collaboration, said that officers who spot school-age children on the street bring the possible truants to the center. The students’ attendance patterns are examined, their school status is determined and any educational problems can be identified.

The students’ parents are alerted and required to pick the students up from the center. Counseling is often suggested, Raney said.

Most outspoken in opposition to daytime curfew laws have been home schooling advocates. Raney said a home-schooled child has never been brought to the center.

In the two years since the program was launched, 753 students have been referred to the center at Louis Lake High School, Raney said. Only 5% of truants seen the first year and 7% of those seen the second year had any further contact with police, he added.

While daytime curfew laws approved in other Orange County cities allow police to issue citations for truancy, “there are no criminal sanctions to our program,” Raney said.

Council members in Orange recently agreed not to consider a daytime curfew ordinance in that city because it runs a truancy center patterned after Garden Grove.