New Policy Gets Tough on Truants and Parents

Convinced that skipping school is a first step on the road to delinquency, Ventura County officials have drafted a tough new truancy policy that will allow the district attorney’s office to prosecute truants and their parents.

Still being refined, the policy will include fines for wayward teens and suspending driving privileges. Parents who do not make their children go to school can receive heavy fines and even jail time.

Authorities say the new policy, approved last week by all the county’s school attendance boards, is intended to send a strong message to students who skip school and parents who let them get away with it.

“This policy will let people know we are not going to tolerate truancy, and here are the consequences,” said Linda Calvin, chairwoman of the County Student Attendance Review Board, which is drafting the new policy. “This will not just be some legislation in a book somewhere. It will not just be school people saying ‘We want you in school.’ ”

Instead, she said, “this policy will have some teeth.”

Those teeth include fining truant teenagers up to $100, ordering them to perform community service, or suspending or delaying driving privileges.

Parents of elementary school-age truants can be prosecuted. In some cases, they can be charged up to $500 for repeat violations. The most serious cases--involving more than one child in a family routinely skipping school--will be punished by up to a year in jail.

Although the battle against truancy has long been a priority for schools, those involved in crafting the policy say three factors are fueling the new get-tough attitude: More financial resources are available to law enforcement to fight low-level misbehavior such as truancy; schools are no longer compensated for absentee students, whether excused or unexcused; and there is a growing understanding that truancy plays a role in crime.

“A lot of D.A. offices have noticed a huge drop in juvenile crime and delinquency once a truancy policy goes into effect,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Deborah Gaskell, who will handle truancy cases under the new policy. The cases will be heard by Superior Court Judge John E. Dobroth in juvenile court.

A common factor in almost every juvenile delinquent file is a deplorable school attendance record, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Miles Weiss, who supervises the juvenile prosecution unit.

“We are realizing that prevention and early intervention is where the true battle lies in combating juvenile delinquency,” Weiss said.

Experts say that once a child is out of mainstream education--whether they are skipping school or undergoing an independent study program--they do not receive the same socialization skills as their peers.

They hole up at home with no supervision, quickly becoming bored. Soon, the truant becomes involved in illegal activities such as smoking, loitering or taking drugs.

More Than a Threat to Change Behavior

“Before long that kid is stealing beer, breaking into cars to get money,” Weiss said. “You see things starting out as curfew violations and pretty soon you know you are dealing with a hard-core delinquent.”

By law, children must attend school until they are 16. After three unexcused absences in one school year, a student is legally considered truant.

That has always been true, and to a point, truancy will be handled the way it has been.

As in the past, school officials will attempt a variety of intervention measures. The measures vary by district, but in general a student’s classes were changed and tutors made available. Then letters were sent to parents demanding the student show up for class.

If that failed to change behavior, truancy cases were referred to the local Student Attendance Review Board.

Those boards are made up of parents, representatives from the school district and members of the community at large, such as police, welfare workers, mental health workers and various youth service agency officers.

Too often, that was as far as it went. If the review board hearing failed to improve attendance, the student was allowed to walk away.

“That was kind of the end of the line,” Weiss said. “Just a threat.”

Now, that will change. If there is no improvement in behavior after the attendance review board hearing, the case will be immediately transferred to the district attorney’s office.

Theoretically, the D.A.’s office always had the ability to prosecute, but did not have the financial and personnel resources to do so, Weiss said. Now the office does.

In addition, prosecuting under the education code can be tricky. Schools and attendance review boards are not trained to collect evidence required in court cases. To prosecute, the county needs a policy detailing what will be done in a particular case each step of the way--and that must be documented. That is what the new policy will do.

“We find a lot of parents who simply throw up their hands and say, ‘I can’t get him or her out of bed. Help me get my child to go to school,”’ Weiss said. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

Already, school districts around the county are picking out cases to prosecute as early as this spring, Calvin said.

Extreme Cases Will Be Prosecuted

The cases selected for prosecution will be the county’s most extreme. Nancy Maxson, the head of the Fillmore School District Student Attendance Review Board, recalled a dysfunctional family with five children, ages 15, 13, 12, 9 and 7.

“Every one of these kids had attendance problems,” Maxson said. The district tried to enforce attendance contracts, to refer the truants to probation, to get follow-up from the district attorney’s office. But the system moved too slowly and the family moved away.

“We see a lot of families who move back and forth. They get caught and they go to another town,” she said.

Several years ago, a middle-school girl in the Conejo school district kept skipping school. Her mother dabbled in drugs and let her daughter stay home when she wished. The mother’s sister went to the attendance review board asking for help in getting the girl, who was described as bright and gifted, back to school.

The mother refused help and the girl began using drugs and engaging in sexual activity in her home, Calvin said. In this case, the probation department got involved and the case was referred to the district attorney’s office.

“Only after the D.A.’s office got involved did she start going to school. That’s how we know it will work,” Calvin said of the new policy.

“We’re hoping that we will prosecute a few cases and word will spread,” Weiss said. “Our hope is that the ripple effect of these cases will increase school attendance and send a message that the failure to attend school will no longer be tolerated.”

Another reason for the new policy is financial self-interest. Until last summer, schools were reimbursed by the state for each student in class, as well as those students with excused absences. But under a new law now being phased in, schools do not receive money even if the absences are excused.

Other Intervention Programs Underway

Just as important as these reasons, officials say they want to add teeth to a set of rules that have long been flouted by students.

“The longer we have gone without consequences, the more the word is out on the street that we cannot do anything,” said Stef Sisman, head of the Student Attendance Review Board in the Ocean View school district. .

The new truancy policy will dovetail with other new programs designed to intervene with wayward youths.

Police and probation officers will use a $356,000 grant to help troubled youths and their families in the Avenue and downtown Ventura area over the next 18 months.

Known as the Community Intervention Prevention and Accountability grant, the money will be used to refer teenagers to counseling, and fund sports and mentor programs, as well as tattoo-removal clinics. The program is also picking up truants and taking them to school.

“When we first started the program, we got a call from the school saying they had a couple of kids, bright kids, who had started to miss school and become truant,” said Ventura Police Officer John Castellanos.

He said parents told him they couldn’t get their children out of bed.

“We said that wasn’t an option,” Castellanos said. “They could go on their own, or I would take them.”

Castellanos and his partner have already made four or five calls in the past month and a half, entering homes and rousing teenagers from their beds.

While school officials across the county are enthusiastic about the new truancy policy, Richard Morrison of Ventura Unified School District says it will not be enough.

“A lot of this [truancy] has to do with kids who are in very difficult living circumstances,” he said. “They are victims of poverty, some of them are sick. It is not fair to paint all of them out as willfully being truants.”

Some children are living in motels, sometimes with children of their own. They have no money and no parental support.

“Some of these situations make you want to cry,” Morrison said. “This is not an easy situation. These students are not necessarily going to be transformed into regular attendees because the D.A. is going to prosecute.”

But in borderline cases, the district attorney’s seal on the bottom of letters mailed to parents can make a difference.

“I’m excited,” Ocean View’s Sisman said on Wednesday after the new policy was approved. “We’ve been working on this for 10 years, and it’s finally happening.”