tedginn05
Legend
Columbus tries to keep kids in class
4,100 district students have truancy troubles
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Alayna DeMartini and Jennifer Smith Richards
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
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The teenager talks to his father on one line while his mother is on hold on the other. Both want to know why he was picked up today, why he wasn’t in school.
"I wasn’t skipping," insists the boy, an East High School sophomore. He lowers his voice and turns to face a corner of the truancy-center room as he continues the conversation.
George Hicks, who helps run the East Side center, stares at the boy’s attendance record for the year: 14 unexcused absences, 51 tardies.
"Your mom know you’ve been late this many times?" Hicks asks when the teen gets off the phone. The boy looks away and fiddles with his pen.
On this spring morning, police brought him and his friend, an Independence High freshman, here. Two hours after the school day began, they were caught in another boy’s house.
On average, four students are brought to the East Side truancy center each school day, but they represent only a fraction of truants. Most are from Columbus Public Schools.
More than 4,100 Columbus students, 7 percent of those enrolled, have missed 15 or more days of school without legitimate excuses. And the district has referred the highest number of students in at least five years to Juvenile Court.
But where there used to be several drop-off centers, only the one at 640 S. Ohio Ave. is left. Where there used to be two police officers on patrol for truant kids, there is only one. All were casualties of budget cuts by the city and school system.
Eight social workers oversee truancy problems at about 140 schools in the district.
Playing hooky might seem like a minor offense, but it often leads students to serious crimes, said Nancy Catena, who heads a truancy-prevention program through Franklin County Juvenile Court.
"Those kids are going to come back as delinquents. We can tell you that," she said.
The Columbus school district has said in past years that it has a serious problem controlling truancy, but officials are more upbeat now.
"It’s not bad compared to other cities of our size, but we don’t take it lightly," said Elaine Bell, who oversees student services for the district. "We have a handle on truancy."
Catena doesn’t see it that way.
" ‘We’re doing the best we can’ is not a very good answer, is it? I think it’s the whole staff’s issue at each school. But if you keep doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results, it just isn’t going to happen. That’s the definition of stupid."
Growing problem
As of last week, the district had referred 2,471 students to Juvenile Court. Of those, 818 were charged with being a chronic truant, meaning they missed 15 or more days with no legitimate excuse.
The number of students sent to court from elementary schools — 775 — is markedly higher than in previous years. In 2003-04, only 144 elementary students were sent to court for chronic absences.
The most striking truancy problems are in high school. At South High School, for example, one in three students has been absent 15 or more days without an excuse this academic year. At West High School, one in four is chronically truant. Last school year, nearly 46 percent of students were truancy problems.
Teens are especially hard to get a handle on, Bell said. "They can drive, and they can walk away."
The school system’s social workers try to track down truant students and their parents. But each works with 13 or 14 schools. Last school year, each social worker was assigned seven schools because other employees were picking up some of the work.
After students have been absent several times, social workers try to reach parents and stress the importance of getting children to school. As a last resort, the case is sent to court.
The school system has tried to focus on reaching middleand elementary-school kids to prevent them from dropping out. In Columbus schools, students drop out most often between ninth and 10 th grades.
Changing habits
Columbus schools are being more aggressive in referring students to court this year, but district officials aren’t sure that’s the most effective route.
Even if students and parents end up in the courtroom, "the judgment may be for them to go back to school and for us to monitor it," Bell said.
Deforest Wallace, an eighthgrader at Yorktown Middle School, played hooky for all but about 10 days in September and part of October before he was charged with being a chronic truant. Classmates were threatening to beat him up, Wallace said. So instead of facing them in school, he stayed home and watched a lot of MTV.
"I would say, ‘I ain’t going,’ and I just wouldn’t go," he said.
Fed up, his parents called the police. When Wallace appeared in Franklin County Juvenile Court recently on a charge of chronic truancy, he promised to take classes online from home.
"I want to do it," he said.
Going to court can be a wake-up call for some truant students, but others don’t change their ways.
A Juvenile Court magistrate can place children who refuse to go to school on probation or remove them from the custody of their parents. But that’s not common. More often, the magistrate orders students to go to school and then schedules them to return to court in a few months to see if they’ve been going.
Columbus school officials say they’re battling truancy in several ways: domestic-violence prevention courses, parenting classes and truancy workshops. They also have launched a districtwide campaign called Count Me In to raise awareness of the importance of going to school.
"Everybody is sounding the alarm," said Maurice Blake, who oversees some of the district’s programs for youths at risk of dropping out.
Parents don’t always hear that alarm, though. Case in point: A kindergartner at Heyl Avenue Elementary School has missed 24 days this school year and was late for 20 more. Her mother, a crack addict, was charged with educational neglect, said Roger Koeck, an attorney for the girl.
The mother told a school social worker her daughter was sick, but when the social worker asked for a doctor’s note, the woman didn’t have one. She said she lost it.
Other parents try to join the district’s battle against truancy. Carmen Perez showed up exasperated at the truancy prevention center last week. She was carrying her son Jonathan’s grades. His recent report card was one F stacked atop another. His 3.8 grade-point average had dipped to zero.
"And he thinks it’s a joke," she said teary-eyed.
This school year, Jonathan, 15, skipped more than a month at Hilltonia Middle School. He was picked up for truancy a couple of weeks ago. Back in school the next day, he walked out the door with his brother and their friends after recess. Perez spotted them from the front yard of her house across the street.
"I caught him twice running out the back door," she said.
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