Baltimore sends parents to jail for truant kids

[Kim♥DISNEY]

Good. Schools get such a bad rap everywhere, yet, we are suppose to teach children (and they need to be on grade level) ... but they never attend school

Someone has to be accountable ... and until a child is 18, they are their parent's responsibility ... with the good, the bad and the ugly.

 

[Mkrop]

I dont think this is a bad idea.

I would hope the school is giving the parent a heads up before so they can attempt to remedy the issue before jail time.

I never cut a day in HS, maybe bc it was Catholic HS and if we didnt show by a certain time, then they would call your parents and ask where you were. A friend of mine and her brother cut and headed down the Shore. They called her mother at work, holy mackeral was there hell to pay when her mom showed up down the Shore and busted them and their friends.

So now I dont understand kids cutting at all, like someone else posted that we all must have done it.

If I found out my child was cutting, I would be escorting them to every class with no makeup and my fuzzy slippers.

I guess this a way to get a wake up call to the parents. Kind like back in the old days when if your dad had to take time off of work to come to the school you knew you were in really hot water!

 

[Holly]

I try to stay away from these discussions but I have to post. Sometimes there are no easy solutions to truancy. My DS had severe anxiety issues. He had psoriasis that was so thick on his scalp he wore a baseball cap to hide it. It started the day before school started and cleared up within a week of summer vacation. This started in 1st grade. By high school I was $20,000 in debt to pay for private schools and counseling. He then began to have severe panic attacks. I drove him to school everyday and the school security stood on the front steps laughing as I tried to pry him out of my car and get him in the building. I could get him in the building and his teachers watched him stand in the courtyard vomiting as he cut their classes. Eventually he had to be taught at home by the district because the anxiety became to severe. I saw the school psychologist every month and when he became a father right before his jr year they cut the schooling. The reasoning, he would drop out anyway.

His sister was assaulted in middle school. In 8th grade she was there less than half the year. She spent time in the hospital 3 different times because of severe depression. The district passed her on to 9th grade anyway. She was then being threatened every other day. I took her to school, took her to the office and left her with the staff to get her to class. She was out the back door, with the staff waving good-bye before I was even in my car.

I spent 3 years going to truancy court, had child services visiting my house every other week and was threatened with jail. The judge told my DH and I that he would force us to value education. The problem was that I did. I was going to school myself and had a 3.85 GPA and was working and dealing with 2 kids with bi-polar disorder. It is not always a cut and dry issue. I realize my circumstances are not the norm. Education is important but jailing parents or students is not always the answer.

You're right- things aren't always cut and dried. I'm sorry your family went through this.


That's a shame. I work with kids in the system and in many instances truancy is part of their case history and in those cases it's obvious neglect and lack of caring by their parents. Your family's circumstances are very different and I'm sorry you were lumped in with the parents who just don't care.

 

[Pigeon]

Very stupid policy and not likely to achieve anything positive in the long run.

Yes, truancy is a problem for some kids, but sending a parent to jail isn't going to improve the life of the child or any siblings. If I were a parent in a district like that with a kid who missed a lot of school, I'd just pull the kid out altogether and claim to be homeschooling. That's going to be worse for the kid.

And these kinds of policies are generally applied in a draconian, one-size-fits-all manner.

Jail time for missing a parent teacher conference? I've never missed one, but quite honestly every single one has been a waste of my time. I haven't learned anything I didn't know already about my kids' school work or abilities.

You can't legislate away bad parenting.

 

[tazdev3225]

So sorry you have gone through this. How are your kids now?

I metioned all of these reasons above, as I see them in my students each day.

So many people like to blame parents, schools, etc., and forget that there can be mitigating circumstances related to physical and emotional health, and these can cause serious truancy, as you related.

Our schools struggle to help kids due to lack of funding, so making kids go to school is one thing, but how are you going to keep them there, if they experience what you have described?

I wish you luck with your children, as it sounds like it's been a long and hard road...

Thanks for being an involved parent, Tiger

Thanks. It was a very trying time. My DS got his GED and is now a Corrections officer. He was later rediagnosed with anxiety disorder and with maturity has overcome it. My DD got her GED also and is now attending college with the hopes of being a nurse or a therapist. I was lucky that there were some very caring teachers along the way that did help them.

You're right- things aren't always cut and dried. I'm sorry your family went through this.


That's a shame. I work with kids in the system and in many instances truancy is part of their case history and in those cases it's obvious neglect and lack of caring by their parents. Your family's circumstances are very different and I'm sorry you were lumped in with the parents who just don't care.

Thank you. I know that there are many parents out there who don't care. There are others who are so overwhelmed with life that they don't know how to care. Age and dealing with my kids has taught me to try and not judge others so harshly. There is never one easy answer. Both of my kids value education for my grandkids and realize better than anyone what a tough road it is to travel without an education. I am very proud of the people they have become.

 

[goofy!]

So you send the parent or parents to jail. What happens if they get fired as a result? If the family lives in public housing, the jail time could be grounds for eviction. Now you have an unemployeed parent with a homeless family. Great policy.

At least in our district, you don't just show up and throw the parents in jail. That is absolutely the last straw.

The parents have been contacted, the family resource people have tried to work with the families, counselors and social services usually get involved before court is brought into play.

It is the parents who refuse to send their kids to school that are the ones who go to court. They have had plenty of opportunities to work with the schools and counselors to help their child get to school.

At least in our district, parents who are making an effort and working with the school would not be jailed even if their kid does walk out the door. If there are behavior plans in place, etc, they are making the effort.

Again, it is the parents who just ignore the truancy laws and refuse to do anything about that are the ones that go to court.

 

[golfgal]

I think people are forgetting that they are talking about less than 1% of the parents with kids that have truancy issues will be sent to jail. This is a last ditch effort, not something for the kid that occasionally misses some school. Also, if the school has requested a meeting with a parent and that parent doesn't show up, I see nothing wrong with having some consequence for that in extreme cases--which is what this article IS talking about.

The problem most people here have is that they don't do this and just don't see it done but it happens, even in "good" schools. There was a family in our kids' old school, a private, Catholic school where you paid tuition even, who's kids missed at LEAST one day a week of school and most often went home early at least another day of the week. The girls were champions at getting out of tests, hard assignments, etc. because they would complain of a stomach ache and mom would come get them. Other parents in schools where I have worked will call in because their child was too tired to go to school (after staying up half the night on the computer or whatever), or they call in so their little darling can go to a tanning appointment or shopping or whatever. THESE are the kinds of parents they are trying to crack down on.

 

[Pigeon]

I find it entertaining that many of the same people who are always screaming about the evils of "big government" think this kind of Big Brotherism is the bees' knees.

 

[Andtototoo]

My dd is a court videographer and has taped truancy hearings. The vast majority of them are due to the older kids being forced to stay home and care for the younger ones while a single parent is at work OR a parent who simply does not value education and thinks it's just fine for the kid to stay home and play videogames all day.

That said, there are exceptions:

No.. my parents did a good job parenting me. They taught me right from wrong. They had their flaws, sure, and there were a lot of things that I disagree with, but they never, in any way, said it was okay to skip school. Did I skip school? A lot. I was a bad kid, not because of my parents. Don't blame it on the parents. Sometimes it's not their fault.

I know parents with a kid like you! LOL

Both parents indeed value education. They both have master's degrees, work in professional fields requiring them. Both push education and always have. The kids were A students until they hit high school. The high school was a well-regarded, award-winning high school and both kids HATED it because it was very much a Lord of the Flies environment. The parents knew the kids hated it, but as far as they knew everything was going okay.

Then one day, the mother gets a call at work from her oldest kid's SUBSTITUTE teacher asking her if she knew her kid had skipped 42 of the last 50 days of school? No, of course she didn't. What happened was that she would drop the kid off at school, the kid would walk in the front and out the back door and go home. The school had an automated voice message system that called home and left a message on the machine telling them the kid was absent without excuse and since the kid was home, the kid deleted the message. Same for the letters mailed home. Since no one at school made any other attempts to contact the parents, they had no idea until this substitute teacher took it upon himself to try and ascertain why a student who had previously carried a 4.0, had basically dropped out of school.

Once the parents were apprised of the situation, they did their best. But.... short of going to school with her and sitting outside her classroom all day, there was nothing they could do. She would NOT stay in school and the school did not prevent her from leaving. The parents could not afford to have one of them quit their job to sit outside the classrooms all day and moreover, the school would not allow them to do so.

She was finally declared habitually truant and expelled. The parents were devastated. They enrolled her in a private school, same result, another private school, same result. Put her in boarding school and she ran away and got in bad trouble. Found her, brought her home... She was too young to get a job, so she won -- she got to stay home. When she was about 25, she finally wised up and got her GED and went to community college and eventually transferred to a 4 year program. If you ask her today about why she did what she did, she still cannot tell you.

In her case, I simply do not know what else the parents could have done.

 

[stinkerbelle's mom]

Sadly a few good parents might be getting caught in this net. You'd be surprised at how many people don't send their kids to school just because they don't feel like getting up or didn't wash clothes.

For the most part the parents get a lot of notice that their kids aren't attending. It should be no surprise to them. I sure would be keeping regular contact with my kids school rather than go to jail.

 

[wvjules]

I'm confused. I thought it was clear that this practice is aimed at those who habitually skip class, who's parents are aware that the kids are skipping and do nothing about it.

Why are the responses about the kid that forgot to turn in a doctor's note, forgot to do laundry, wanted to take a day off, etc? Those aren't the invididuals that are the problem. The average kid missing a few days of school isn't going to land their parent in jail. The kids that skip frequently with the parent's knowledge is the target of this.

I see no problem with it.