O.C. Parents of Truants Could Lose Benefits

For thousands of aid recipients with children, California’s new welfare reform program is requiring them to do more than get jobs.

A little-noticed provision of the overhaul calls on counties to eliminate benefits to adults whose children younger than 16 do not regularly attend school.

To supporters, the rule cuts to the heart of the personal responsibility that welfare reform is intended to foster.

Children who attend class irregularly are most likely to have academic problems, drop out of school and then have trouble holding down jobs. A recent survey of Orange County welfare recipients found that 55% are high school dropouts and that many consider their lack of education as a key barrier to gaining employment.

“There is a cycle of poverty out there that can only be broken if children stay in school and get an education,” said Frank Bohlen, who has been counseling students at the Orange Unified School District for 27 years. “You see it in generation after generation.”

But as social workers and educators move to implement the rules this month, some officials are urging caution and sensitivity amid the zeal for toughness. Benefits should be cut off only as a last resort, they said, and only after parents and children are offered extensive counseling and alternative schooling programs.

Counties have been informing recipients about the new rules over the last few months but they don’t expect to begin implementing the school attendance provisions until later this year.

At local welfare offices, the impending changes are being met with a mixture of apprehension and acceptance.

Ann Johnson, a Garden Grove aid recipient with two elementary school-age sons, fears that the rules will add more stress as she tries to get off welfare and enter the workplace.

“It’s a lot to drop on me all at once,” said Johnson, 35, who was laid off from a job as a receptionist last year. Like other recipients who are able to work, Johnson will be required to participate in vocational training, find employment and make do with a five-year lifetime limit on benefits.

“It seems wrong to just cut a family off and leave it high and dry if a single mother like me is trying to do right with their children,” she added. “I always tell my boys they have to go to school. But when they get older, they might not listen to me. Is that my fault?”

Others are more receptive to the requirement, saying they don’t want their children to make the same mistakes they did.

“I hated school and never graduated. Now I regret it because it’s harder to find a job,” said Ismael Rivera, a 41-year-old Cudahy resident and father of four. “So I think this is a good idea. A diploma makes a big difference.”

Rivera, who recently was laid off from a job at a manufacturing plant, said he pushes his children to stay in school.

“There are times when I have to pull them out of bed and out the door in the morning,” he said. “But when my oldest son graduated from high school, I was very proud. It was worth all the fighting.”

California’s new school attendance rules are similar to other “learnfare” programs developed over the last decade in states such as Wisconsin and Ohio. Few fault the intentions of the programs, but critics have raised questions about their effectiveness and cost.

A test program is underway in three San Diego County school districts where parents whose children are frequently absent face cuts in their welfare benefits. The program is considered a model for the statewide effort.

Results from 1996--the first year of the test--found that children whose parents faced loss of benefits had only slightly better attendance records than the control group--77.3% versus 74.1%.

Wisconsin’s “learnfare” program yielded similar results, with little difference between the attendance patterns of welfare and non-welfare students.

But Wisconsin officials said overall school attendance is up, an indication that publicity about the get-tough policy has prompted both recipient families and those not on welfare to improve. Some state legislators reject the explanation and have suggested that the state retool the program or focus on other methods for stemming truancy.

The biggest criticism of “learnfare” is the high cost of having government social service agencies comb through the attendance records of what in California could be hundreds of thousands of students. In Wisconsin, the attendance program cost $70 million to administer from 1988 to 1996 but reduced welfare payments by only $12 million.

Local officials have yet to determine the costs of California’s program but stress that the goal is not to cut welfare payments but to encourage students to stay in school.

The state guidelines say that parents can lose their benefits if their children younger than 16 do not regularly attend school. Teens 16 to 18 risk losing their own welfare payments for missing school, and their parents face no penalties.

Counties are still developing rules for what constitutes “regular” attendance and exactly how social service agencies will monitor the thousands of children. School officials said they generally focus attention on students with more than a couple of unexcused absences a month.

Rather than having social workers examine all attendance records, Orange County school districts intend to pass along serious cases to social workers if school counselors cannot resolve the truancy problem on their own.

Educators said poor attendance goes beyond the stereotypical image of teens cutting classes.

In some poor families, older children miss school to watch younger siblings because both parents work. Single parents are especially reliant on children to handle such household jobs, officials said. Some teens face pressure to help support their families by finding work that conflicts with their high school schedules.

“When I worked in Montebello, we had kids cutting class because they didn’t want to walk down a certain street where you had shootings and gangbanging,” said Richard Martinez, coordinator of student services for the Irvine Unified School District. “Sometimes, you had kids out because they had to take siblings for a doctor’s appointment.”

Because of these complexities, Martinez and others are urging counties to be conservative in implementing the attendance rules. Before aid is cut off, they argue, students should be allowed to participate in alternative schools and parents should be provided with training that helps them better push their kids to attend classes.

“Some parents have a feeling of helplessness, like they almost want to give their parental powers to someone else,” said Soo Kang, a therapist with the Orange Unified School District. “They don’t have parenting skills and need help in learning how to discipline their children.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District intends to take a cautious tack--offering services to families with truancy problems and reporting them to the social services agency only as a last resort.

“We are not going to do this in a punitive or capricious mode,” said Hector Madrigal, the district’s director of pupil services and attendance. “Once a youngster is found to be in violation, we are going to issue a warning and try to work with the family. We don’t want to use welfare reform as a hammer.”

The approach makes sense to Rosa Garcia of Long Beach, a single mother of two boys who has been receiving welfare since the office where she worked closed last year.

“It wouldn’t be fair to stop my payments for something I can’t control,” said Garcia, 30. “I will do whatever I can, but a parent can only do so much.”

But welfare recipient Brian Herrera of Norwalk said the government needs to be tough. “I want him to be better than me,” Herrera said, pointing to his 18-month-old son, Zeppelin, as they waited at the Norwalk welfare office. “I ditched school all the time, and it hurt me. I’m going to force him to say ‘no’ and stay in school.”

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Welfare Concerns

A survey of 800 Orange County welfare recipients conducted last year by the Social Services Agency shows that most have less than a high school education and lists a variety of perceived barriers to working.

What is your education level?

Less than high school: 55%

High school diploma: 22%

Some college: 17%

Associate degree: 4%

Bachelor’s degree: 2%

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The top barriers to work listed by recipients:

* Language

* Transportation

* Job experience

* Temporary health-related incapacity

* Child care

* Lack of education

Source: Orange County Social Services Agency