Learning Truancy’s Lessons

Perhaps the only one who may dislike being made to sit in school more than a habitual truant is the truant’s parent. But that’s where one father recently found himself after a judge ordered him there. He should consider himself fortunate to have sat in his son’s classroom that day. It could have been a jail cell.

It’s all part of the county crackdown that has put teeth in long-standing truancy laws, rarely enforced because of a lack of funds and personnel.

Thanks to more than $200,000 in state and federal grants to Orange County, the money and enforcement help now match the desire of school and law enforcement officials to attack the problem and get errant youngsters back in school.

Three deputy district attorneys have been assigned to the program. They are tracking the attendance records of hundreds of students throughout the county for possible legal action. Truancy is defined in the state Education Code as three or more unexcused absences in a school year. Habitual truancy is six or more unexcused absences.

While prosecutors are searching for truants, school officials and social workers must be equally zealous in seeking out the causes and solutions that could make the strong enforcement effort unnecessary.

Because of the importance of keeping children in school, parents should strongly support the effort. If they need other motivation, such support also could help keep the parent out of court and possibly jail. Parents found negligent in meeting their legal responsibility to be sure that their child attends school could be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

The approach is not entirely new. School and law enforcement officials began stronger enforcement of habitual truants in the early 1990s. Police then would ticket unsupervised juveniles found roaming the streets during school hours. The citation required the youths to appear in Juvenile Traffic Court with a parent or guardian. If they treated the judge the way they treated their teacher and failed to show up, an arrest warrant was issued and their driver’s license suspended. If found guilty they were subject to a fine and community service.

But punishment is not the main goal of enforcement efforts. Education is. And involvement by the district attorney and court must remain the last resort in a series of steps, including counseling, parenting classes and mentors to keep children in school.

Frequent absences put the student behind in classwork. That struggling often leads to poor grades, being held back or eventually dropping out entirely. Police also say habitual truants are more prone to being involved in crime or becoming victims of crimes, while on the street instead of in the class- room.

In one of the first two cases prosecuted under the new enforcement program launched in August, one father, whose son had missed 45 days of the first few months of the new school year, was ordered to have his son in school and also to sit in his son’s fourth-grade class at least once a week.

The students and parents who fail to follow a judge’s attendance order face possible probation, curfews, loss of driver’s license, fines and even a jail sentence. In the long run, the loss to them and the community from habitual truancy is much more costly.