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Truancy Cases Up In Escambia Schools, Judge Proposes Solution
January 25, 2010
Truancy is a growing problem in Escambia County’s public schools, with cases that make it to court up 50 percent in two years, and a Circuit Judge is proposing a solution.
“There is a truancy crisis in Escambia County. Truancy data collected by the Escambia County School District shows a continual increase of truancy cases filed in Escambia County Juvenile Division in the past three years. Escambia County children cannot obtain a successful education if they are not in the classroom,” Circuit Judge Ross Goodman said in a letter to the school board.
Goodman is suggesting that the Escambia County School District implement a School Truancy Operation Program, also known as “STOP”. Under the STOP program, law enforcement would transfer the youth to the Hope Center where the Department of Children and Families would be notified that the youth is truant. If the child has been through truancy court before, the presiding truancy judge will be notified. Parents will be required to pick up the child in person at the Hope Center.
At the Hope Center, the child will be presented with an age appropriate educational curriculum and a counselor will meet with the youth and parents together to address the incident and possible refer the family to other services.
Goodman said his plan has been discussed by the Escambia county Truancy Committee — which includes the court system, Pensacola Police Department, Escambia County Sheriff’s Office, DCF, Department of Juvenile Justice, Lutheran Services, the GED department and the Hope Center.
“Truancy isn’t just about missing school. Truancy is about intervention to resolve the obstacles that are preventing a student from attending school,” the judge said.
In Escambia County, truancy cases increased from 65 during the 2006-2007 school year to 96 in the 2008-2009 school year.
Comments
18 Responses to “Truancy Cases Up In Escambia Schools, Judge Proposes Solution”
I know of a parent who allows her child to miss classes and the child failed because of it….she still allows the child to miss…for parents like this, something drastic needs to be done…the child is at a different school, failing miserably, because they are NEVER at school
SW
What the statement means to me is to be kind, considerate and encouraging to every child that you can if the occasion arises. Know nothing about where it came from. Janice Parker
TO MOMA, DAD WELL= GUARDIANS OF NVHS STUDENTS
IS strict discipline, requirements, an expectance of students to do reading, writing, research and hand assignments in on time college level? Does this help teach self discipline? YES, YES, YES. MAYBE IT SEEMS LIKE COLLEGE BECAUSE YOUR STUDENT/CHILD DOES NOT, NOT UNDERSTAND.
When is the last time someone at your home sat down and ask, “What is your assignments today?” to your 9 – 12 grade student?
Then DO always have, every day reading assignments. AND DON’T SETTLE FOR THE OLD, “I’VE ALREADY DUN IT”. WHEN IS THE LAST TIME YOU, YES YOU HEARD YOUR CHILD READ ALOUD. AND YOU HAD BETTER LISTEN PARENT!
Get them to read it AGAIN so you can see if they need practice or go over that math with you again to make sure they understand the assignments. Maybe they fell behind and need to be caught up. Help them. This way you can see if they understand. Get them help if they don’t.. Call that teacher(s) let her/him know Susie does not understand. She’s needs help now.. Don’t be ashame. Just do it. And mom and dad, granny or papa, older brother or sisters , if you don’t understand the assignment, let the teacher know pleasees let s know. We are not that bad. But if we don’t know what to fix/CHANGE WE CAN’T HELP! There are tutors who volunteer to help with assignments and reading and understanding. There is also a program your child can USE full of adults, retired who can help. two times a week ASK!
We at NVHS WANT TO SEE OUR STUDENTS DO GREAT, HELP US HELP THEM.
WANTING TO CHANGE NVHS FOR THE BEST
A village to raise a child? I must disagree with that statement, Ms. Parker. That is a socialist/communist agenda to encourage participation with the collective. That is an agenda pushed by the UN and other progressives. Please reconsider that. It does take a family to raise a child. It takes a good education system as well. Something, I fear, we don’t have in our area.
Otherwise your post has great merit.
Good luck with dealing with Northview. I found it to be rather difficult. Thankfully, my children survived the ordeal and have gone on to succeed in spite of it.
I agree with most of what everyone says about this, but I have a few problems that haven’t been mentioned. I don’t know what the cirriculum is for k-5, but I feel some of it needs to be changed. There are children in our system who get a small amount of encouragement from anyone. Teachers as well as parents need to teach their children self-love and respect. If we save one or two children, it would be well worth changing the way our children are taught. We also need to remember the saying that it takes a village to raise a child.
I also have something to say about a counselor at Northview. It’s the one who told my daughter that she just needed to take her child home and homeschool her when she went to the school and tried to talk about a problem she was having at school that was causing her truancy. She was being bullied by a girl and even under threats of arrest at Ernest Ward, she continued on into Northview. This makes me think that Northview isn’t the place you want your child educated. You also have at least one teacher there that teaches on a college level. She may be proud of that, but when my granddaughters were going there, I was told by them that there was very few of her students that didn’t dread to walk into her classroom every day. I wonder how that fact makes her feel? There are a lot of contributing factors when it comes to the causes of truancy.
Ya know, not all of the kids who are considered truant are skipping school. Many of them are sick and have doctor’s excuses. The absences don’t always get counted as being excused however.
My daughter has been diagnosed with migraines and a rare form of epilepsy. She has missed a lot of days for testing and doctor’s appointments. When she does, I send the doctor’s note and a request for all the assignments she has missed. I still receive notices and visits from the school social worker telling me that her absences are unacceptable. I want to know WHY? She has been out of school legitimately excused by her doctors and yet we are still dealing with truancy actions.
May I ask what good putting me in jail would do? For one thing, I don’t have the money to bond out, so I’m going to be there for a while. In the meantime, my kids will be out of school because they will have to go to another state to stay with my mother, thereby resulting in even MORE days for all of them to miss and even MORE truancy court. My daughter will also miss important doctor’s appointments and her medical condition will deteriorate. Again, what good will that do?
There are also days that she has been counted as absent when she was THERE. I have started keeping a calendar and marking every day whether she was there or not and why. If she wakes up at 5 a.m. vomiting and crying about how badly her head is hurting, I’m not sending her to school at 7:30. She’s going to take her medicine and lie down in a dark, quiet room and wait for it to work. If it stops soon enough and doesn’t leave her groggy and disoriented, I will take her in late. If it doesn’t, she’ll stay home.
What I don’t understand is why there is no distinction made between medical issues and just plain skipping school. Why are the parents of children who have medical issues being punished? Don’t you think we are dealing with enough already? I’m worried about IMPROVING my child’s health…..NOT endangering it by sending her to school when she shouldn’t be there and also distracting the classroom when she has a seizure or starts vomiting everywhere. What kind of sense does this make? NONE.
hey…let em be truant.
I mean, there will always be a need for someone to wipe the cars off at car washes…
I never missed a day of school on purpose, ever. I knew if I did, my parents would have found out and id have been in deep crap. Kids today dont care. They dont respect their parents, they certainly dont fear them. Kids have the upper hand in a sense. If they skip, get picked up, parents show up..they pop in ther ear buds and crank their I-pod and listen to their Soulja Boy…ignore their parents on the way home…get home, flip parents off, blame parents for all problems…and recieve apologies and reward.
Beat your kids around a little…dont put em in the hospital…but a quick slap across the face in front of friends can do wonders.
Spare thee rod and spoil the child. It worked for me as a child and it worked when I was raising my children. If one of my children called the law and had me locked up guess who is going to be taken care of when I am released. Yes, you guessed right.
There will always be a few people who do not go to school for one reason or another. Truancy is a bad thing. However, shouldn’t the object be to keep these kids in school and provide something in their lives so they can be productive citizens?
Truancy may be a symptom; not the disease….
Pick up the parent or parents at home, at work, shopping, visit make a statement. Parent = responsibility, when we chose to have children, we chose to take FULL responsibility of these humans until they are 18.
They are allowed to act like adults, dress like adults and most cases talk to their parents like adults by their parents. ARE ALLOWED is the key words,,,, is the problem.
Parents will maybe think twice before these behaviors are allowed if they are held accountable. I know there are grandma and pa’s who can’t seem to do a thing with them, well give them a court appointed person to see that they are where they are suppose to be.
The disrespect now is incredible. Please parents graudians take that child and use discipline.
THESE SAME “KIDS” ARE WHO WE ARE DEPENDING ON TO HELP US WHEN WE ARE IN OUR 60′S, PLUS. Can you even imagine some as doctors, lawyers, managers. etc. Everyone can’t be a truck driver or Walgreen employee.
Billbo, why, brick layers always need a mud mixer and someone to cary the bricks. You just have fun while you can. When you get caught they may need someone to pick up trash on the side of the road also. All those good jobs like that are easy to find. May not pay much, but I’m sure that won’t matter to you. A fun loving guy like you may not even need to work at all. After all that mud mixer will work. He don’t have time like you.
While I agree that the parents play a HUGE role in ensuring their kids stay interested and connected with school and education, I really doubt the validity of the role “spanking” has in kids attending school or even behaving well. I was spanked (and at times beaten) all through my childhood when I acted out of line. Still I skipped classes, skipped school and eventually dropped out of high school at age 16 against the recommendation of my parents. I had loving caring parents who always showed interest in my life, but I still felt the need to revolt, even more so when subjected to physical violence. Hitting (swatting on the hand or butt) a child much past the age of 2 – 3 merely teaches them to hit other people and/or fear those that should be protecting them, which is why we have such a problem with child and spousal abuse these days. Fortunately people are becoming more educated on how discipline children and hopefully someday the majority will understand that physical abuse is not the answer. The answer is staying involved and showing interest in their young lives. When they sense that you are disconnected or have stopped showing interest in their lives, many of them will stop caring too. I now have three of my own ages 9, 12 & 16 who I have never laid a hand on; they are consistently on the A/B Honor Roll and receive accolades for Citizenship. My kids are far from angels but I have learned that I don’t need to hit them to punish them. Instead they are subjected to the same types of punishments that would be received when rules and laws are broken as adults. We don’t beat adults when break the rules or laws, why would we beat children? The key is to stopping truancy is to stop it as soon as it begins. Which the schools I have kids in do a good job of IMO. If my child misses a class unexcused, my wife receives a call from the school thus giving us a chance to get involved immediately. Parents that don’t care about a truant child should be jailed. Parents that do care but have lost control of their child need an avenue to get the child back on track. I think STOP is a great idea.
Great job, whitepunknotondope. The family that plays together, stays together. Parents that are visible, involved and consistent help children grow up to be the same. We need more parents who are willing to be parents. Turn off the T.V., cell phone and computer and talk to your child. It’s amazing what you might learn.
My ten year old son (who plays video games and computer games) pulled out his sister’s old Monopoly game not long ago and asked me to play it with him, so I did. After we were finished he said “I have a great idea! Let’s have a family game night!”
So we went and bought a brand new Monopoly set as well as another board game and now the kids beat the parents at board games one night a week!
AMEN TO WHO;S WHO, you hit it on the nail. It all starts with PARENTS and what our kids are taught at home. I was just praying about how a lot of the kids in this area have no family time, hardly any downtime. It seems the minute they are out for the weekend, it is go, go , go. What happened to just staying home with family, why do they always have to go spend the night out or “hang out” somewhere other than home? Are the parents too busy with themselves to see what is happening? The kids are making the decisions about what they want to do, where they want to go, what happened to MOM and DAD making those decisions.My parents were old school and yes they were not cool and they certainly were not my “friend” , when I was a teenager, but they raised me to be honest, respectful, responsible, and that anything worth having was worth working for and to be aprreciated. I did not talk back to them (which is why I still have my natural teeth) and when they said no, that was all the discussion.We need to get back to our roots, where GOD, FAMILY are first. I pray for our youth, they have a long hard road ahead of them!It would be interesting to know just how many truancy’s we have at Northview and Ernest Ward.
This is a problem that started 30+years ago when we as parents were told you cannot spank you child and if you did, then you would have to answer to the courts. The people that made a lot of these rules that we follow today have created a monster. Parents now are being told to talk to their children and spanking is no longer allowed. And if you dare say something wrong to them, they (your Children) are to report you to Dept. of Children and Families. When I was coming up you got a spanking if you done something bad. My generation is the ones that are working today and have some manners. This new generation, they don’t want to work, no manners, irresponsible and a whole lot more I can’t say on this site. We put to much trust in them college boys that run the show and that they would do the right thing. And that they knew what they were talking about and so on. And now we are seeing the results and it don’t look pretty. Our world is full of crooks and dishonest people. Look at our jails they are full. We are on the wrong track and it’s all going to derail soon. We need to set a standard for our kids and make then stick to it. A standard of honesty, integrity and good citizenship and so on.
catch me if you can?
While they are at it picking up the kids and taking them to the Hope Center, they might just go ahead and pick up the parent(s) are guardian(s) and let them spend a few night in jail.