New Truancy Law Harsh Lesson for Families

Jacob slouched in a chair outside the courtroom, an angry expression on his face. His mother, Lucia, sat nervously on the other side of the room, harboring the same anxiety as mothers everywhere when their sons are about to go before a judge.

Jacob’s crime? Truancy. The potential penalty? For Jacob, fines and the loss of his driving privileges. For his mother, up to a year in jail.

“Either he goes to school or I go to jail,” Lucia fretted. “I don’t think that’s fair. I’m doing my job as a mother.”

It may sound harsh, but Ventura County authorities say it’s about time society put some teeth into its truancy policies. In the daily struggle to get truants to attend school, principals have tried stern lectures, meetings with parents, detention and Saturday school. Campus police officers have even pulled kids out of bed.

But last month the gavel began coming down harder than ever on students who habitually skip school. Prosecutors who had been monitoring the worst truants for months began hauling their families into court.

Jacob, 14, was one of the first to go before Superior Court Judge John Dobroth. Lucia estimated her son had attended school less than 50% of the time for the past three years.

No matter what she did, Lucia said, she could not get Jacob to class. And because she is a single mother, works and goes to school herself, Lucia said she didn’t have time to monitor her son’s attendance.

Once in court, Jacob promised to clean up his act and go to school. In a few weeks he will appear in court again so the judge can learn if the teen has kept his word.

“He’ll shape up,” his mother said as they left court. “He can do it. He’ll go to school.”

Advocates say the Truancy Referral and Prosecution Program is a step beyond school districts’ reprimands that have had little effect on the worst truants. Students now face $100 fines, suspended or delayed driving privileges and up to 40 hours of community service. The court can also place students on probation or even take them from their parents and make them wards of the court.

Parents can be ordered to attend parenting classes and pay $100 fines or put up $200 bonds. In the most severe cases, parents face $2,500 fines or a year in jail.

Families can also lose CalWORKS welfare dollars if the children don’t go to school.

“Before, we had mandatory attendance laws, but it was like a tiger with no teeth,” said Wayne Saddler, assistant principal at Rio del Valle Middle School. “Now we’ve got teeth.”

According to the state education code, students are truant if they have three unexcused absences in one school year. And they are considered habitually truant if they have six unexcused absences.

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But the students who appear before the judge have often missed weeks, or months, of school.

The decision to send students to the judge is made by Deputy Dist. Atty. Pam Grossman, who said she is tracking 200 cases but has referred only about 10 families to court.

That is because the aggressive truancy program does not aim only at punishment. Authorities say it is designed to enable school and social services officials to determine why students are missing so much class. Sometimes it’s the parents’ fault, and sometimes defiant teenagers are to blame.

Cases include a first-grader whose mother is mentally ill and won’t--or can’t--take her to class. There are the three children--ages 8, 13 and 15--who have bounced around from motel to motel with their drug-abusing parents. And there is the 16-year-old who has only attended school three years, receiving more education from TV than teachers.

“Truancy itself is a symptom of something else,” Grossman said. “We are trying to get to the bottom line and figure out what the problem is.”

The truancy enforcement program is a system of gradually escalating interventions. Before having to appear in court, parents receive a letter from the district attorney’s office informing them about the law and the potential consequences of continued absences.

Truants and their parents then attend a Student Attendance Review Board hearing, which usually includes a school administrator, psychologist, nurse, probation officer, school resource officer and now, a prosecutor, Grossman.

That meeting frequently ends with the student signing a contract requiring him or her to attend class every day. Students have signed about 20 contracts with Grossman in the past six weeks. Sometimes the students are also referred to mandatory tutoring or counseling.

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From September to March, one fifth-grade student missed class 14 days and showed up late 36 times. During the attendance review board meeting, the student agreed to go to bed earlier and arrive at school earlier. In April, the student had only one absence and one tardy.

If a student’s attendance doesn’t approve after the attendance review board meeting, or the family repeatedly does not show up for the meeting, the prosecutor takes action. The district attorney’s office can also file misdemeanor charges if the child receives four truancy citations within the school year.

During the 1998-99 school year, 957 students attended attendance review board meetings throughout Ventura County. Of those, 633 students improved their attendance, the attendance records for 221 students remained unchanged, and 42 attended even less school. The results for the remainder are unknown.

School officials said they believe court intervention could have made the difference for the 263 students whose attendance did not improve.

“In order to really address these severe attendance cases, we need to go to another level--the district attorney,” said Phil Gore, an administrator at the Ventura County superintendent’s office who helped develop the program. “For some parents and kids, it’s needed to get their attention.”

During an attendance review board hearing in El Rio on Wednesday, a short, stout man sat in front of a panel of nine people who wanted to know why his teenage son had missed 13 days of middle school and arrived late 24 times since September.

Assistant Principal Saddler told the father his son’s attendance was unacceptable. Grossman told the father the teen had to show up for class--and on time--every day. Both said they wanted to help the father get his son to class.

The father told the board his son has been sick a lot, and said he thought the absences were excused. But the father also said he knows his son is at a rebellious age, and said he doesn’t want the teen to get into bad habits. So he agreed to personally deliver any excuse notes, and to call the school regularly to make sure his son is attending.

Three of the first six families scheduled for the attendance meeting did not show up for their appointments. One of the youths who didn’t make the meeting had missed five weeks of middle school. He had also been in trouble for fighting on campus, and was failing several classes. The school resource officer said he was worried about possible drug use.

If he and his family don’t show up at the next attendance review board meeting, the family will be sent to the judge.

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Police officers praise the get-tough approach, saying truancy is the first step to juvenile delinquency.

“A lot of the daytime crime comes from juveniles who are not in school,” Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Steve Arthur said. “If you get kids in school and off the streets, you reduce the crime.”

Tina of Oxnard and her 16-year-old daughter showed up outside Courtroom 36 Tuesday afternoon. In addition to a truancy citation, Tina said her daughter has been cited for vandalism, violating daytime curfew and running away.

Tina said the discipline doled out at school isn’t harsh enough for chronically absent students. The daughter said she ignored the reprimands she had received at school, the mother said.

“The courts have more power behind them than the schools,” Tina said. “They can impose stiffer consequences.”