BY SANDRA STOKLEY AND DARRELL R. SANTSCHI
Inland educators are working to reverse what a top state official has called a school “crisis” — 1 of every 5 elementary students in California is truant. Many thousands more were chronically absent in 2011-12. The Inland picture is equally troubling. In that school year, the most recent for which figures are available, 29.3 percent of Riverside County’s 425,651 students were truant at least once. In San Bernardino County, 36.3 percent of 414,495 students were truant. Both figures are higher than the 28.5 percent statewide average cited by Attorney General Kamala Harris in a recent report. Because of a change in how data are collected, the numbers can’t be compared with previous years to see if the problem is worsening. “Those numbers are shocking,” said Gerry Lopez, senior deputy district attorney in the Juvenile Division of the Riverside County district attorney’s office. School officials, police and prosecutors are hosting Saturday schools, conducting truancy sweeps and visiting businesses where kids ditching class might hang out. Though schools lose state money when students aren’t in class, educators also have bigger worries. “The greater harm … is that they are not here for me to teach,” said Richard Husband, student support services director for the Hemet Unified School District. “If you are sick, I don’t want you here because I don’t want you to infect the rest of the classroom,” Husband said. “But if you are not sick, I want you in school.” Harris’ report not only focused attention on truancy, it raised awareness of the connection between chronic school absences, truancy and, ultimately, students dropping out, Lopez said. Studies show that as early as elementary school, chronic absences are the strongest predictor of quitting school before graduation. Lopez said he would like to see educators spend as much time combating chronic absenteeism as they do hauling truants back to school. “Before they become truant, these students have a history of chronic absenteeism,” said Lopez, who is organizing a session for educators on the topic later this spring. CHRONIC ABSENCES Truancy is when a student is absent or tardy by more than 30 minutes without a valid excuse three times in a school year. Chronic absence is defined as being absent for at least 10 percent of the school year. In a 175- or 180-day school year, a student who misses 18 days or more of a school year is deemed chronically absent. When a student fails to show up, it costs a district state funding based on average daily attendance. In the 2012-13 school year, Riverside County school districts received an average $37.47 in state funds for each day any student came to school. Statewide, more than 250,000 elementary school children missed more than 10 percent of the school year, Harris’ report stated. District-by-district truancy numbers in Riverside County ranged from a high of 62.1 percent in the Banning Unified School District to a low of 9.5 percent for the Val Verde Unified School District, according to the state Department of Education report. The numbers represent students who were reported truant at least one time during the 2011-12 school year. Considering the costs of “incarceration, lost economic productivity and tax revenues, dropouts cost California an estimated $46.4 billion per year,” Harris’ report said. EXCUSES School attendance officials and others say parents give many excuses when their children are truant or continually absent. “It starts as early as kinder (garten),” said Susann Hazen, a youth services specialist with the San Bernardino City Unified School District. “Parents think (kindergarten) is not important.” Studies show that children who are chronically absent in kindergarten and first grade are less likely to read proficiently in third grade. As years pass, they fall further behind. Parents confronting poverty, domestic violence, alcoholism, drug abuse or their own misconceptions about the importance of school are a major challenge, Hazen said. “To some of us, it’s a ‘nobrainer.’ You send your kids to school,” Hazen said. “But to others, it’s a way of life not to send kids to school.” Students can also fail to grasp the value of an education. “One young man said he wanted to be a rapper and didn’t need an education,” said Bryan Astrachan, a Banning Unified School District administrator. For families that don’t respond to meetings and attendance contracts, districts use a Student Attendance Review Board and efforts such as parenting classes, anger management sessions, drug and/or alcohol counseling and Saturday school so students can catch up on missing credits. Some school districts visit homes. BUSINESS VISITS San Bernardino City Unified School District has used this tactic with its Operation Student Recovery. School officials and law enforcement officers knock on doors to find truants and get them back to campus. Last month, the district introduced an offshoot that had district officials — including Superintendent Dale Marsden — and law enforcement visit businesses that are magnets for truants. They asked merchants and store owners at fast-food restaurants, convenience stores and the mall to join their push to keep kids in school by calling the district’s Police Department to report truants. “Truancy is a community problem,” Hazen said. In Riverside, police visited the homes of chronic truants this past year. They expect to mount another effort in the next couple of months, Lt. Andy Flores said in an email. In their January sweep, officers contacted 29 youths and cited seven for daytime loitering. The team visited 12 homes and talked to the parents of chronic truants. Truants were returned to their schools. In February, the Jurupa school board learned that the 18,511-student school district has an overall 6.1 percent chronic absenteeism rate. School Trustee Donna Johnston said she was appalled that some of the district’s elementary schools had chronic absentee rates approaching 10 percent. For example, Glen Avon posted a 9.8 percent rate, while Rustic Lane had an 8.6 percent rate. Johnston said with the state changing to the new Common Core academic standards, “we can’t afford to have these children out of school.” Ultimately, unresponsive parents can be hauled into court and charged with a violation of California’s Compulsory Education Law that requires every child from the age of 6 to 18 to be in school — on time, every day. Lopez said his office files an average of 10 to 15 cases a month against parents who violate truancy laws. Still, parents remain incredulous that they can be prosecuted for something they consider innocuous, Lopez said. “Parents think truancy is like ditching,” Lopez said. “The kids just went to the beach. But when they are finally in front of a judge, it becomes real for them.” The real tragedy, he said, is that when things get to this point, many students already are lost to the educational system. “When we prosecute, we’ve won the case,” Lopez said. “But we’ve lost the cause.” Reach Sandra Stokley at 951-368-9647 or [email protected] Reach Darrell R. Santschi at 951-368-9079 or[email protected]