Oxnard Truancy Program Hailed

Record numbers of Oxnard students who ditched class during the last school year got caught, thanks to a new truancy program being touted as a model for cities in Ventura County.

Developed by Oxnard Police Officer Dave Walker, the federally funded Student Truancy Offender Program--or STOP--involves law enforcement, school officials, social service workers and parents.

“Just looking around this room speaks highly to the collaboration involved here,” Oxnard Police Chief Art Lopez said at a press conference on the program Thursday. “Basically, we’re keeping kids in school. And we recognize that it’s had an impact on crime.”

Implemented last August, the program issued 2,747 truancy citations in the 2000-01 school year, up from 434 in 1999-00. Although numbers of individual truants were not available, only 9% of the offenders were caught more than once, Walker said.

According to federal statistics, 57% of violent crimes committed by juveniles occur during the day when the student should have been in school; 67% of truants test positive for drugs when they are detained, and 78% of prison inmates list truancy as their first offense.

Truancy also has financial consequences.

Countywide, up to 5% of students are truant each day, county Supt. of Schools Chuck Weis said. That translates into up to $40 million in lost revenue, because annual state education allocations are based on a district’s average daily attendance, Weis said.

“I believe this program . . . could be used by every city in the county, and I would encourage them all to jump on this,” he said.

Officers Walker and Karl Dyer ran the program, though at least one-third of the city’s force participated in some way during the school year, Walker said.

With names and addresses gathered from schools, parents and neighbors--and buoyed by a revision in state law allowing truant arrests to be made inside homes--officers began knocking on doors.

About 93% of the students who were ditching class were found at home, usually watching television or hanging out with friends while their parents were at work, Dyer said.

Officers even broke up a handful of “truancy parties,” at least one of them with more than 100 kids, police said.

Once picked up, the truants were brought to the STOP center at the old Oxnard High School campus on 5th Street. There, under a list of handwritten rules that include “face forward” and “do not lie,” they waited to talk with a counselor.

Of the 2,747 citations issued, the STOP center referred about 1,200 to further treatment or guidance programs. In about 150 cases, both parents and students were prosecuted, Deputy Dist. Atty. Miles Weiss said.

“What has made this so successful is that it’s driven by the social service agencies,” Walker said. “We had youth counselors, job and career specialists and drug and alcohol counselors ready when the kids got here.”

The program began with $50,000 from the Department of Justice but needs about $100,000 more to continue at the same staffing levels next year, Dyer said. Officials are seeking grants to make up the difference, he said.

One 15-year-old Oxnard boy who came to Thursday’s press conference said he was picked up for truancy last year after spending months cutting class and experimenting with drugs. It took him three more citations, but eventually he got on track, he said.

“I was in the process of getting in the gang--I had just got my head shaved,” he said. “Now I’m focusing . . . on one thing, which is going into the Air Force when I graduate. I know I’ve got to stay in school.”