“Our job is to save these kids. Sometimes you have to give them hard choices,” Monk said recently. “I was one of the bad kids myself in school, so I know how it is. But I turned it around. These kids need to turn it around, or they’ll wind up in jail because they don’t respect the law.”
The problem is, Whitmire said, criminalizing truancy doesn’t turn kids around.
“School districts use truancy as an easy way out. You ticket a 14-year-old girl and then find out she wasn’t going to school because she has no maternity clothes,” he said. “Now what good will that ticket do for her?”
Truancy is only one of the infractions for which school kids in Texas can be charged with misdemeanors. Whitmire, with State Sen. Royce West of Dallas, got a bill passed during the 2013 legislative session to rein in the use of such tickets by school and law enforcement officials.
Those tickets are written by deputy sheriffs or police officers called in by school officials. While many tickets were issued for serious infractions like fighting in school or cursing at teachers, some districts were ticketing students for things as silly as wearing mismatched socks or chewing gum in class.
In many school districts, officers were writing thousands of tickets per year — and the schools and the courts split the income from fines paid as a result.
Thanks to Whitmire and West’s legislation, school officials now must take a series of steps before disciplinary tickets can be written. Those include talking with the student, talking with the student’s parents, and sending home a note to parents about their child’s behavior. The law went into effect during the last school year, and disciplinary ticketing around the state declined substantially.
Whitmire and West wanted to include truancy charges in that system. But Whitmire said recently that truancy courts in Houston and Dallas counties wielded enough clout that the bill would never have passed if truancy were included.
The Houston senator said he’s determined to try to change the truancy situation in 2015.
“It amazes me that grown-ups are making the decision to criminalize truancy when it’s so obviously wrong,” he said. “You wind up with so many instances where the student had no control over things. The kid’s mother’s car breaks down, and she can’t afford to fix it, and the kid misses a few days in school, and the next thing you know both the mother and child are in court getting fined and hit with a Class C misdemeanor. So now they can’t fix the car, and they can’t pay the fine. Was that a good thing to do to that family? No.”
Terra Tucker, a senior policy analyst for the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, chaired by Whitmire, said that the new law regarding disciplinary tickets is also having an effect on how some school districts approach truancy.
“Some of the schools are sitting down with the kids and their parents and trying to figure out what’s wrong. And what we’re seeing from that is a drop in truancy cases in those school districts,” she said.
But she thinks a lot more needs to be done.
“Sometimes parents are not taking truancy seriously, and some of the judges will do things like order them to attend classes with their children. That will get a parent’s attention,” Tucker said. “But of course then there are complications with that: What about single-parent households where the parent has other children to take care of? Or working parents living paycheck to paycheck who absolutely have to go to work?”
In such cases, she said judges should dig a little deeper to make sure that the punishments they impose don’t do more harm than good.
What Tucker and Whitmire are trying to eliminate are cases in which kids are sent to court when they have a reasonable explanation for missing class.
“Yes, the schools have mandatory filing, but they also have discretion. And that needs to be exercised a lot more than it has been in the past,” Tucker said.
Whitmire’s plan to move truancy from a criminal to a civil proceeding was the focal point of the recent committee hearing.
Henry, the juvenile justice case manager, was adamant that truancy should remain a criminal offense. “Making truancy a civil matter will lower the standards of holding students and parents accountable for it,” he said.
He dismissed the idea that a misdemeanor record could hold people back. “In the 15 years I’ve been doing this, of all the thousands and thousands of truancy cases I’ve dealt with, I’ve never heard one case where someone said their truancy violation hurt them later in life,” he said. “Rather, we get the students who come back and say ‘Thank you for being tough on me. That helped me straighten out.’ ”
Henry’s tough love extends to weekends in jail. If a student breaks the terms set by the court, a night or a weekend in jail might help teach him or her to toe the line. And 17-year-olds do sometimes spend time in jail.
Scott MacKenzie, a middle school principal in San Antonio, said that intervention by school authorities is the way to curb truancy, rather than automatically taking children to court.
Other principals backed up MacKenzie. Ralph Funk, a Houston high school principal, said that when school officials took time to meet with students and their parents to thrash out the reasons for truancy, almost 75 percent of his school’s cases were dropped.
“Relying on courts to solve the issue is not working,” said Mary Mergler, a staff attorney for Texas Appleseed. “The response most of the time is to fine the students, which puts significant hardship on the poorer families who are most likely to wind up in court.”
Mergler recently requested truancy and graduation data from the 20 largest school districts in the state for a study Texas Appleseed is preparing. Eighteen responded; of those, Mergler said, the districts that relied heavily on court as a method of dealing with truancy had lower graduation rates than districts that relied more on school intervention.
One reason for that, she said, is that the substantial financial burden of fines encourages some parents “to have their kids drop out of school to prevent further fines being assessed against their kids that they can’t afford to pay.”
In the end, Mergler said, Texas Appleseed “cannot find any connection between criminalizing the kids and fining the parents and better student attendance … . What we are doing is completely counterproductive.”
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I was really interested in the article until you used Rev. Tatum as a source. That man is untrustworthy, irresponsible, entirely self-serving, and some of his activities border on being criminal. The Weekly itself reported on what he did to hold up FWISD this past summer by putting students and adults in their early 20’s to work in schools when he’d been told not to. Then he wanted to extort $70, 000 from the district for his decision to put them there. Don’t forget his $10,000 “administrative” fee he included. Please in the future use only reliable sources.
As far as the truancy goes, like anything else there are times when poor judgement is used when dealing with school/court situations, however many of these kids that go to court are not there because parents couldn’t get them to school on time or they had to work or take care of siblings. It’s because they simply don’t want to go to class. It could be because their friends talked them into skipping or they don’t like a teacher or subject. Whatever the reason it’s a choice the student makes and should be held accountable for it. Since the court is dealing with juveniles that means the parents are also held accountable for the children’s actions. The goal is to get the parents to take responsibility for their children and get them to school. It is also the responsibility of the school districts to work with those students that do have to work or take care of siblings or need extra help in a class so they will go to class. I personally think that truancy court is an important tool for districts to use if used wisely and along with good common sense.
The issue is that no other states use truancy courts like Texas does–we run 2-to- 1 for the entire nation. And we have not gotten positive results. We’re near the bottom of education on every facet. Truancy courts, particularly in Dallas, have not increased attendance, only led to higher drop-out rates. Intercession, interviewing the parents has led to major drop off’s in truancy rates in some counties and ISDs. The problem might not be Rev Tatum but the way we use the hammer when a gentle prodding might work for most of the kids.
If you were to tell me that well-to-do families were facing the same truancy problems as poor families, I’d agree with you. But with the vast majority of truants being cited for 3 tardys in a month, and the vast majority of those people being poor or living in poverty, I think you should re-think your position. A parent who allows his/her child to skip school at will should certainly be held responsible, but if the hammer always falls on the poor kids, well, that’s something else and it needs to be looked at deeply.
Wait, wait, wait, wait…. Peter, Texas is ranked in the top 20 states in education, where did you get your information from?! Search it up on google, literally every single source ranks Texas as an “average” or “above average” state when it comes to education. I recall that Texas received a “-c” when it came to average grades for students (California received the same grade) and the highest I’ve seen TX ranked in education was 11/50 and the lowest was 20/50. Lower attendance in schools? … Texas graduates have been increasing, do a simple freaking search. There are organizations and government sites that give updated information on this, and TX isn’t even in the bottom 50% when it comes to education in the U.S.A. May I also point out that the top 2/3 high schools in the US are located in Dallas, TX, and some of the top Universities in the >Worldalways< trying to find an idiotic way to bash conservatives directly or indirectly (One obvious motive is bias, which tends to reflect of off the writer's of the article because of their very inaccurate information which can be proven wrong with a single google/yahoo/bing search. Please, do more freaking research, these articles are utterly bull crap. Literally.
My comment got cut off and combined at >World/alwaysWorldalways<"
Ugh… I meant “Some of the top Univirsities in the world are located in TX (UT, Rice, SMU)” when it wrote *lessthan*World*greaterthan*/ and I meant “FWweekly is *lessthan*always*greaterthan* trying to bash…”
Well said! It is pretty ridiculous in Judge Monk’s court. My daughter had was tardy a few times her freshman year and with no prior warning, we were given notice to appear in truancy court. There were so many kids in court for similar offenses that we were there all day and for a first offense, I felt he was pretty harsh. The way he talked to the kids and the parents was uncalled for. His tone and demeanor were very accusatory and just rude. My daughter was late getting to class because it was her first year in that huge school and she was just figuring it all out. I am sure she did stop and talk to friends too long but I thought a learning curve was in order. He treated her like she was caught dealing drugs or something or at the very least like that was where she was headed…
Peter, please read what I said again, particularly about using the courts wisely. The student sent to court for 3 tardies is obviously wrong but what other factors figured into that decision? Your response seems to imply that this is some kind of war on the poor when it isn’t I’ve seen case after case where parents will only respond to their child’s truancy because they are sent to court and even then the court has to threaten the parent with sanctions to get their cooperation.
As far as Tatum goes, I stand by what I said. He’s not a trustworthy source for anything.
Citizen: I think you are relying on the lobbying group ALEC, funded largely by the Koch brothers, which writes bills and hands them to congressmen at both state and federal levels for submission to help business. ALEC ranks the Texas Educational System 18th nationally, based on “focusing on performance and gains for low-income students,” and that’s it.
But, looking at the real picture, rather than the rosy one: According to the Texas Legislative Council, in 2013 Texas ranked 44th in percentage of high school graduates–when drop outs are taken into consideration–47th in SAT college entrance exams, and only 17 percent of all Texans ever earn a basic Bachelor’s degree from a real college or University.
Which doesn’t mean we don’t have some great grammar schools, high schools and universities. But overall, we’re near the bottom. It’s a dismal picture, nothing like 18th in the ALEC study, a study which has been pretty well lambasted by most educators as fictional.
Citizen, Peter is correct about the rankings. The rosy picture painted about our graduation percentages and our educations system is simply not true. Some of the same universities that you mentioned are continually complaining about how unprepared our graduates are for college, even on the most basic levels. It’s an example of the bigger the lie the more people believe and ALEC really tells whoppers.
Peter Gorman, that is the most pathetic excuse I have ever heard. So the second someone disagrees with you and has data on their side, you claim that they were sent from some organization and you claim that every single source isn’t trustworthy? By the way I never gave you a specific link because a person who is smart enough to write an idiotic article should at least know how to search up info on the internet. Literally >all< the links rank Texas education as average or above average, just like I told Ken, your observations are irrelevant when it comes to ranking education, again government organizations (which aren't bias) rank the usual states (NH, Maine, Mass., RI) as the top states for education. If the data would lean towards conservative states than Alabama, Mississippi, hell even Louisiana would be ranked number one. Maybe you should do more research, one thing I know for a fact about most of FWweekly is that they hire extremely idiotic delusional ill informed people like you, I usually try to support local newspapers, businesses, etc. but sometimes hard headed biased individuals such as yourself are hard to argue with since again you have a strong bias. Fed-Up do some research, I know not 100% that is on the internet is true but if you search up "states by educational rank" on google, bing, yahoo, etc. literally every single freaking link shows Texas in the top 20, what I believe is that you guys are the type of people who base things off of what other people tell you, or maybe you just believe whatever someone from your side tells you. Do research. If you really can't see the heavy biasness in FWweekly, than I will no longer argue with you. I have posted this on forums and many people (both democrat and republicans along with independents) agree that this site is heavily biased (emphasis on bias). I bet after I wrote this Mr. Peter is going to come up with some lame excuse of me coming from an organization that I am not even familiar with. Btw this conversation is also going to be posted in the forums I participate in, in order to see what people (who support your side) say on this… and let me tell you that the last poll I did agreed with me. (I am not going to tell you the website because I don't want a very dull person like you ruining the forums for me, but I will say that the site has data from all over the world, and people from all backgrounds participate in the forums, so the data isn't bias because the polls I do are usually done in the national sections. So continue on with your observations about the state being ranked low on everything even though there is an overwhelmingly amount of evidence from non-bias sites which prove you wrong. I am done discussing with you since based off your lame/dully composed comment, you are obviously not the type that will actually let their shell crack. Adios
Citizen: The problem isn’t me. The problem is that you are not looking at real data. The ALEC sponsored study, which is the study quoted by various links, is not a real study. It simply isn’t. I have no horse in this race. I would prefer Texas to be number 1. It ain’t.
Citizen, I live this, it is my job. The data is being manipulated so that Texas education looks better than it is. Think about this, how can the education budget continually be under funded, remember not long ago a $5 billion dollar cut, and the quality increase. Hundreds of teachers lost their jobs, class sizes increased, hours wasted daily teaching to the standardized tests instead of teaching students what they truely need to be successful make the data impossible to be accurate. Also remember even outside the legislature with the Texas Board of Ed is controlled by ultra conservative members whose behavior over textbook decisions have made Texas a joke. Plus we have an Education Commissioner who is not an educator and has no education back round of any kind making decisions for our students. So far all of his have been purely political not practical and none of them have helped the students of Texas.
One more thing, as soon as you begin to attack someone that disagrees with you , you have lost not only your argument but your credibility. I don’t think either myself or Peter have been disrespectful to you so speaking for myself, please disagree with me but be courteous about it.
Re:Article. Unreal… Is it my understanding that we a parents have been wrong all these years to teach our children responsibility, accountability, rewards and discipline, and that what actions they take not only effect their life and others around them, positively and negatively. The educational system supports and enforces this teaching as well while providing free public education. When children( may i remind everyone these are pre-teens and young adults) do not attend or skip school, classes or are late and parents and schools have done everything possible to cure the issue, then courts and laws assume a stricter method of enforcement and encouragement to assure values and education continue on course. Rich or poor has no weight in the excuses/reasons given in most cases for a child skipping, being late etc on a regular basis. They need to be at school on time, and in class on time!! As adults their jobs require the same!!!!! This is usually the first indication of a child choosing bad behavior patterns that later become ” I don’t have to go to school”, “I dont have to follow the rules”, or ” I don’t care what the law says”. Bending rules, breaking rules, breaking the law. see the pattern here??? If parents truly love and care about the child’s education and future..then “if there is a will, there is a way!”. Foolish are the advocates that only seek to pity and return our weened children back to a milky tit and coddle them as babies, And they insult families by making them out to be poor and helpless,victims of circumstance, unable to have no control or desire to achieve and strive. Warning: the eyes of our children are intently watching all we do!!!! Being less fortunate and a single hardworking mother… do not try to preach or convince me,or my children, that we are victims with excuses and handicaps!!!! Did I missed something…but what was their solution for these 100,000 kids a year not “originally” following the rules and landing in court, to assure positive effective results long term results??? My children in the past have been in Judges Monks court for attendance. With the guidance and firm discipline in the court my children not only got back on track, but they were held accountable for “their” actions. The fines and community service served enforced that they better behave and do as ordered! Very fair!!! As a parent until they are 18, I am held accountable as well…one of the many rewards for being a parent!!! Like it or not!
For those who claim “I didn’t know, or was not told or informed”: Parent and children are made aware of rules of attendance in what is called a “student handbook”! Notices are sent out and every attempt made to contact parents when violations occur. Courts and schools make every effort to work with parents and students to address current violations before it results in fines etc it.! I’m getting the impression that some parents, like their child, think court is a joke and they should be greeted in court by clowns, balloons and smiley faces when ordered to court for rules and laws that have been broken!!!! Guess the advocates would personally dress up in the clown suits and hand out the balloons, while painting on smiley faces…..
I would also like to add that most of these advocates have watched “PeterPan” one too many times and really believe Never Never land is real…. Where children don’t have to be subject to parents, rules, laws, cares, concerns, reality, disipline, education etc…. Where they will never have to grow up!!!! So A more fitting name for all of you would surely be “The PeterPan Clan”!
Mr. Gorman,
As you may know, state education law does not address “tardies.” So, school districts have taken it upon themselves to equate “tardies” with unexcused absences, which ultimately becomes an income source for school districts and the courts. The following link is TEA’s position on “tardies:” http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/taa/legal011113.html. Although dated, the information is still current. Also, you may wish to review Texas State Attorney General opinion DM-200. It is amazing, and at the same time sad, how many school districts continue to ignore an opinion from the Texas State Attorney General.
RH
That is such a lame statement… If students where in attendance as required… They would not be In court! Guess it would further be assumed that we should not place court cost and fines for anyone who breaks the law then…. The goal is to get kids to be attendance when and as required…. All which is free of charge!!!
That is such a lame statement… If students where in attendance as required… They would not be In court! Guess it would further be assumed that we should not place court cost and fines for anyone who breaks the law then…. The goal is to get kids to be attendance when and as required…. All which is free of charge!!! It’s not about the money… It’s about education!