Columnist Sandra Thompson: The travails of tracking truants

SANDRA THOMPSON is vice president/associate editor of the Las Vegas Sun. She can be reached at 259-4025 or on the Internet at [email protected]

THE dream of reducing the truancy rate in Clark County could turn into a nightmare.

According to a state law that went into effect July 1, 1997, any student with more than three unexcused absences during the year is considered a habitual truant. The student could lose his/her driver's license for a time and the parents could face a $100 fine.

But the problem is how do you enforce it? And who enforces it -- school police or Metro Police?

Then there's the logistics nightmare of keeping track of absences in secondary schools. How many are for legitimate reasons such as illness or missing a class or two because of a doctor's appointment? Should a straight-A student with three absences be considered a truant?

It will be cumbersome to report every student in a high school of 3,000 who has three or more absences, according to Ruth Joseph, who on April 1 was named attendance administrator for the Clark County School District.

But the new law mandates tracking truants, and Joseph says the district agrees with the need to do that. Her job is to come up with procedures to comply with the law.

Manpower will be an issue. One attendance clerk per high school can't track every single absence. The current computer program doesn't distinguish between a student who's absent for one class or for the entire day. So even if only one class is missed, the student is marked absent for the entire day. Ten absences don't necessarily mean a student missed 10 days of school.

The logistics problems may be resolved with new computer software that should be installed in all the schools by 1999 or 2000, Joseph says. It will allow schools to more efficiently track real truancy.

Right now, it's difficult to distinguish between excused and unexcused absences. And even if you write the school a note, the absence may not be deleted from the main computer.

A school district spokesman says each teacher sends an attendance report to the school office. If the student is sick, he has three days to bring in a note excusing the absence. In junior and senior high, the spokesman says, you'd have to write a note to each teacher. That's unmanageable, she says. The room for error is tremendous.

If each teacher then follows through and corrects the attendance report, the information is sent to the main computer and hopefully the corrections will be made. In the meantime, the postcard detailing the absences and saying your straight-A student is in danger of losing his driver's license or parents may be fined already has been sent. That triggers heart palpitations in responsible parents.

On the other end of the spectrum are students who simply don't want to go to school and allowed by their parents to stay home. How does the new law affect them?

One father called to say his 16-year-old son hasn't been in school since January. He says he called the school counselor, dean and principal, citing the new truancy law. He spoke to a school district administrator, who told him the district could not enforce the law.

The father's case is complicated -- but not necessarily atypical -- because he's divorced and his son lives with his mother. He said that when he had custody of the boy, he was a GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) student and rarely missed school. He says education is not a priority of his ex-wife, so the boy isn't encouraged to go to school.

The boy couldn't be placed in an alternative high school; he's taking "home studies," which the father says "sounds like hogwash to me."

The father feels helpless, but is reluctant to take his ex-wife to Family Court. He's looking to the school district to impose sanctions and enforce the truancy law.

Ruth Joseph says there must be a parent partnership with the schools to ensure kids are going to class.

In the past, truancy citations weren't issued beyond eighth grade. Truancy was addressed in the secondary schools' attendance policies.

"We were putting our attention on those in the classroom," Joseph says.

Now, because of the state law, more attention will be focused on kids not in the classroom.

A school attendance advisory board has been created to address truancy and its causes. "It's a symptom of other issues in the family or school," Joseph says.

California has found one way to attack the truancy problem. Beginning in July, the state will pay schools for students who are actually in class, not just the number of students enrolled. Their funds will be based on attendance rates as an incentive to cut down on truancy. The flaw is that excused absences will be counted in the truancy column, which will skew attendance figures.

The plan also may be shortsighted. As Joseph points out, you still have to pay for teachers, staff and classroom buildings for the students who do show up for class.

Johnson will be meeting with local principals this week to review procedures on how to track truants and discuss what schools can do to keep kids in class.

The latter, of course, will be the biggest challenge.

archive