Getting Them To School

School talk today.... Do you have much truancy in your schools? In my area of the U.S. there is a mixed record for truancy, with high schools having the best attendance. In our high schools, a student fails for the entire year and must repeat it if he or she misses more than 10 days without a written doctor's excuse proving real illness. But our middle and elementary schools have no such attendance rule. And it can be a problem.
One local judge in nearby lake Charles, Louisiana got tough last week. Fed up with middle school (grades 6-8) kids missing to much school because parents and guardians let their kids skip or fail to assure they attend, police rounded up the parents of those absent kids and Judge Lilynn Curter is now deciding whether to jail mom and dad for the missed school days. Every parent or caregiver his the legal responsibility under the law there to educate their children, so Judge Curter and fellow Judge Bradberry told the parents , "No excuses are being accepted today".
All the parents were hauled into the courts and asked to explain why their children had missed at least 5 days of school in a single month or had similar histories in the past of allowing little Johnny and Sue to miss classes. In fact, one of the parent's kids missed 20 out of 25 school days last month, all without any evidence there was illness as a factor. The law in Lake Charles and the rest of my state says that the parents may be fined or jailed, but those two judges say they will only jail the parents.
I like it! The maximum jail term is 30 days, but since each school day counts as a separate offense, theoretically, mom and dad could be in the slammer for years. Adult s who plead guilty have been told their jail terms would be suspended if they attend a saturday truancy programs, those pleading not guilty and not providing evidence they did not neglect their child's education will go to jail. It may seem a tough policy but I think it a good one as early truancy goes along with academic and behavioral problems in school and is also correlated with high drop out rates in higher grade levels. Teen pregnancy and drug abuse also correlate very highly with frequent school absence.
Too, one of the most important responsibility of a parent is to provide for educational opportunities. Keeping home a child so he or she can baby-sit a toddler sibling, to go shopping, because mom and dad are too lazy to get the child ready to go to school, or just because the student doesn't want to go a particular day is not valid. Do you have a parental responsibility program for parents of kids in your school that includes jail time and fines for negligent parents? Do you think such a program is fair?
Sometimes school principals should be arrested and jailed too! Take the case of Wade Pilloud, principal of Indus, Minnesota school. Wade seems to have an itchy trigger finger when on the campus because he was forced to resign the other day and could face felony firearm charges after he shot and killed tow orphaned kittens on the school property. Wild Gun Wade said he shot them to "spare them from starving to death after their mother was killed in an animal rap". Apparently, Wild Gun Wade didn't think of other more humane ways of "helping" the kittens. Too, Wild Gun says that the shooting didn't put anyone in danger because it was done after school. Fortunately, several students who were on school grounds that day for after school activities heard the shots and reported the incident.
Wild Gun was given citations to appear in court....let's hope he will leave his shooting irons at home this time.