D.A.’s Program Tries to Head Off Truancy Early

The parents filed into the cramped auditorium of a Bell Gardens elementary school--towing their fidgety children and brimming with angry explanations about why the youngsters had missed more than 15 days of school last year.

But the group wasn’t facing a truant officer or the school principal. The 50 or so adults were confronted with Deputy Dist. Atty. Pat Cannon, a seemingly blithe man with a flamboyant tie who was calling them good parents one moment and threatening them with criminal prosecution the next.

Cannon is one of six prosecutors in the Abolish Chronic Truancy program, a collaborative effort in 16 Los Angeles County school districts aimed at forcing parents to stop writing notes claiming sickness for kids who aren’t really sick. The program focuses on young children, not teenagers, because they are at an age at which their parents can more easily wield strong influence.

Ultimately, those who fail to heed the district attorney’s repeated warnings to get their children to school face a year in jail and a $2,500 fine. About 40 parents have been prosecuted, while 35,000 have received letters and attended the meetings, officials said.

Schools that use the program say it has reduced the number of absentee students, sometimes dramatically, and raised their academic performance. And law enforcement officials say that prevents a destructive lifelong chain of behavior, which starts with excessive absences and can lead to dropping out, crime and imprisonment. Almost 80% of prisoners in America are school dropouts, says Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti.

“I viewed this program as a way of protecting the community and preventing crime in the first place,” he said last week at a news conference to tout the effort. But beginning this school year, the program offers another motivator: money.

Previously, schools received funding for every student in class or with an excused absence. A campus might have lost funding by disputing such absences.

Now, under a new state law, excused absences no longer count in tallying “average daily attendance” and schools have a financial incentive to put students in their seats. Many school district officials say the anti-truancy program more than pays for itself in the long run.

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Principal Eddie Velasquez of Bell Gardens Intermediate School said his absentee rate has dropped from about 250 out of 1,800 students a day to just below 100.

“If I’m bringing in an additional 100 students a day, at $24 a head, that’s $2,400 a day for the district,” he said.

At Rio Vista Elementary School in Pico Rivera, the absentee rate has fallen by half since the program was implemented three years ago, said Principal Jerry Nerio. “It had an immediate effect on the attitude of both parents and students,” he said.

Other principals say that their absentee rates have not declined as significantly, but that the program has affected those children with the worst attendance problems.

Anne Eichman, assistant superintendent of the El Rancho Unified School District in Pico Rivera, said parents no longer tend to take their children on unannounced trips or let them stay home whenever they cry.

“The program provided a serious tone about school and really changed some attitudes,” she said.

Although Garcetti says the program is expanding, the elementary schools that work with his office are largely concentrated on the Eastside and in the San Gabriel Valley, due to strong support for the program from county Supervisor Gloria Molina, whose district includes those areas. Until this year, she paid more than half the salaries of the anti-truancy prosecutors with discretionary funds allocated to her office.

She is no longer providing that money, counting on the program being self-sufficient or the districts supporting it with grants or their own fund-raising efforts, said Miguel Santana, her press deputy.

“She was the lone supervisor who understood the merit of this,” Garcetti said.

Although the program was started at an elementary school in South-Central, prosecutors said the Los Angeles Unified School District has been far less receptive to it than others.

Of the 162 elementary schools in the program, only 40 are in L.A. Unified, whose officials were not available to comment.

“It was the school districts like Montebello that reached out to us,” Garcetti said. “We were willing to go into any district.”

Parents targeted by the program first receive a letter from the district attorney’s office saying they must appear at a meeting “to prevent possible court action.” At the meeting a prosecutor spends about an hour appealing to parents’ emotions--including the fear of going to jail--and emphasizing the importance of attending school.

At Cesar Chavez Elementary School in Bell Gardens last week, Cannon started off cordially with the group, joking and trying to relate as a fellow parent.

“I know that you’re not bad parents,” he said. “You’re good parents. And I’m happy that you’re here. We want your children to succeed. But they can’t do it with 16 or 20 absences.”

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Cannon urged parents to be forceful with strong-willed children--to get them out of bed, take the televisions out of their rooms, question them when they have “stomachaches.”

But within minutes Cannon’s pitch dropped and his tone turned threatening as he explained that unless their children have a legitimate reason to stay home, they must go to class.

“If you fail to do that,” he said, carefully enunciating, “hear my words, see my face, I will be the D.A. to prosecute you.”

Then he pointed to headlines of “silly” parents who had been prosecuted and actually spent time in jail. He said this was only the last resort and not the goal of the program.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Higgins, who established the program in 1991 at Parmalee Elementary School, said his approach is “schizophrenic” in that it weaves together a pep talk and a threat.

“I pull out all the stops,” he said. “I look right at the parents and say, ‘What are you going to do when your kid is grown up and is applying for a job at McDonald’s and loses out to a 16-year-old high school kid and says “Mom, why didn’t you make me go to school.” ’ “

Some parents said absenteeism was a school matter and that the D.A. was far too aggressive in cracking down.

“When children are sick a lot, there’s nothing we can do,” said Rosie Rosales, adding that her 5-year-old daughter had had chicken pox. A man next to her said his daughter missed two weeks because of eye surgery.

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Elizabeth Schroeder, assistant director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said parents should not be held criminally responsible for the behavior of their children.

“If you have a big 12-year-old in sixth grade, he can be very intimidating,” she said. “He can control the parent.”

But as the Bell Gardens meeting wound down, some of the initial anger seemed to subside.

“I was very upset when I walked in here,” one woman told the crowd. “I’ve heard it in English and Spanish. People are [upset]. But I agree with [Cannon]. Let’s get rid of the anger and have a positive change and make sure their minds grow.”