Police finding younger children at home during school hours
With budget cuts looming and ADA, or average daily attendance, funds dropping, School District officials are understandably concerned about truancy; police officials say there may be another reason to worry.
As representatives from the district and School Board and the City of Morgan Hill met Friday in their regular City/School District Liaison committee meeting, officials discussed the fact that besides the negative impact on learning and district finances, truancy can lead to greater problems down the road.
“We need to keep this at the forefront, because this will be a community issue if we don’t keep on top of it,” MHPD Lt. Joe Sampson said during the meeting.
The problem, he said, is a lack of parental or guardian enforcement.
“What we’re seeing, it’s with maybe fourth, fifth and sixth graders, but if the trend continues, we’re looking at the students who are most likely to get involved in criminal activities when they are older,” Sampson said.
Sampson told committee members that MHPD officers are increasingly reporting seeing students who should be at school when they answer calls to homes for other reasons.
“They’ll ask the parent or guardian or whatever adult is there with the children, ‘Why aren’t they in school?’ And the answer will be, ‘Oh, they didn’t want to go today.’
“Our officers are frustrated, what do we do about parents or guardians with that type of attitude. These are 11- and 12-year olds, many of them, who are not made to go to school,” Sampson said.
School Board trustees, forced to cut nearly $3 million from next year’s School District budget, have cut more than $6 million in two years. There is no a truant officer position in the district; the attendance clerks at the individual sites have had their hours cut but not their workload.
The Police Department is also shorthanded. There are two SROs, school resource officers, but one has been sidelined for several months with an injury. There is little time, Sampson said, for officers to drive around looking for truants.
And the nature of truancy has changed, he said.
“It used to be that you could drive around and see them,” he said. “Now, where are they? They’re inside, playing video games, watching TV. They’re indoor kids.”
Superintendent Carolyn McKennan said at the individual school sites, attendance clerks try to spot trends.
“But it is very labor intensive work,” she said. “We just do not have the resources to focus more manpower on this issue.”
City Councilman Larry Carr, a former School Board trustee, said he would like to make the subject the major focus of the committee’s next meeting.
“I know the County Office (of Education) is looking at some sort of amnesty program – you can start with a clean slate if you just come back,” Carr said. “I’d like to pull this out for broader discussion, working together, maybe involving Community Solutions.”
Community Solutions is a non-profit family services organization that provides prevention, intervention, treatment and housing services.
