Columnist Sandra Thompson: Some parents not worrying about finishing touches

AMID all the talk about boosting school attendance figures and stemming the dropout rate comes concerns about "early-outs."

In an early-out, a parent withdraws a student in a year-round middle school three weeks before the end of the last track.

Under a new state law, a student is not permitted to miss that amount of class time. Any student with three or more unexcused absences is considered a habitual truant, and there are penalties. To get around that, parents simply withdraw their students from school.

The school district will be tracking these withdrawals, but doesn't have the statistics now to back up some teachers' and counselors' concerns that the early-outs are getting out of hand.

One middle school teacher, for example, said 16 of his 65 students withdrew last week. (They're mostly better-than-average students.) The track ends Aug. 13, and the parents wanted the students to go on vacation or have a break before high school starts.

Ten middle schools are on year-round sessions, with the last track for most ending Aug. 12 or 13. High schools, which are on nine-month schedules, start about two weeks later, which doesn't give incoming freshmen much of a break. So some parents are opting to withdraw their students early.

If students withdraw from school before the last three weeks, they receive the grade they have earned up to that point. They don't have to take final exams.

The problem is that the student does not fulfill the attendance requirements (180 days or 170 days on year-round with longer school days).

Early-outs do happen, according to Pat Waddel, assistant principal of Johnson Junior High School. "It's a reflection of year-round (schedules). People are used to time off," she says. But she adds that early withdrawals are not unique to year-round schools.

"We discourage early withdrawals. We encourage parents to keep students in school. But we're not the custodians of parents," Waddel says.

Sometimes parents with children in both year-round and nine-month schools are frustrated. They stress education, but then put the emphasis on family when it comes time to take their kids out of school.

"It's individual choices people are making for their child," Waddel says.

Patrice Johnson, principal of Lied Middle School, says she has received only five requests for early withdrawals. She, too, highly discourages such actions, and tells students they must return to school for their final exam or they won't get a grade. They may not receive a report card, either.

"So the kids say that since they'll be responsible for learning the material so they can pass the exam, they might as well stay in school," Johnson says.

Jeanne Donadio, assistant principal of Brinley Middle School, says her school's number of early-outs has significantly dropped in the last three years.

The community has become used to the year-round schedule, now in its third year. In the beginning, some parents didn't know the ramifications of such a schedule and were withdrawing their children before the end of the term for vacations and similar reasons.

Generally, when parents withdraw children from school, they are asked for an address or the name of another school if they're moving. There are supposed to be consequences if parents simply remove the child from school and do not re-enroll him elsewhere.

Although actual figures aren't being kept on early-outs, the Clark County School District tries to track the transiency rate, according to Ruth Joseph, attendance administrator for the district.

"Almost every single day, kids enroll and withdraw. The turnover is horrendous," she says.

Joseph says she has heard concerns about early-outs and will look into it. She says families sometimes don't understand the ramifications of children missing school. For example, some parents take their kids out of school for two to four weeks to travel to other countries.

One of her main goals is to keep kids in school, to keep the district in compliance with the new state law on truancy. "We are in compliance now," Joseph says. Since she was hired April 1, she says she has been "moving steadily along."

Truancy figures could be skewed because there are different reasons for not being in school. Some kids leave school because they don't want to go to class or must get a job, some are habitually truant and just don't show up for class, and some are withdrawn by their parents for such reasons as vacations or to take a "break."

Joseph says she will work with school staffs, as well as parents, on the attendance policies and to stress the need for the child to actually be in the classroom seat for the mandated time.

"We don't want to cause problems with families," she says, but adds they should understand the importance of education.

The state can legislate all it wants and the school district can have a multitude of policies, but it comes down to parental responsibility to ensure kids are in school when they should be.

The trick is getting that message across to parents.

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