what are your thoughts on sending this mother to jail over her child's truancy?

[Hikergirl]

Without knowing more, I don't think we can know that. No number of meetings and threats from district officials or prosecutors gets a kid transportation to school, or overcomes the housing/basic care insecurities of poverty in a place with a scant safety net, or makes punitive attendance policies (which, in my experiences in the same state, are very much dependent on the school's socio-economic profile) reasonable for the working poor. So unless the meetings were something more than the "agree and we'll postpone criminal action" ultimatums discussed in coverage of other, similar cases involving the same prosecutor, there is a high probability that no actual solutions were offered.

I think it is very unlikely to be coincidence that this one particular prosecutor in this one particular county is doing the same things everyone else tries to help struggling families but just happens to encounter parent after parent that is unwilling to cooperate. I think it is far more likely that he simply disregards the challenges these parents face as excuses and thinks if the threat of punishment is strong enough/real enough, they'll find a way to get their kids to school without help.

I didn't mean that the school was going to solve this mother's problems, I meant that if the mother had not ignored their attempts to deal with the truancy she wouldn't have been sentence to serve time.
They could have discussed what was going on with the mother and then come up with an alternative to jail time.
If she failed to contact them, they had no way of even knowing the kind of situation she is in.
I see no issue with a prosecutor using punishment when it is deserved. IMO if this woman kept ignoring them, and failed to show up she brought that punishment on herself. She doesn't get a pass because they should assume she has legitimate reasons, she needs to explain her reasons that her kid missed so much school and try to work something out. And from what I understand she didn't for how long, 14 months?
I haven't read anything other than the link in the OP so I'm just going by what it said in that.

 

[Relentless Mom]

My son has been taken for truancy, he had a doctors excuse, both my parents passed away in the same month, being both, my son and I are/were the only child, and at once it was literally raining in our home, so we had to move into a hotel, all legal excuses that wasn't excused. It started with my asthmatic son having the flu out with a doctors note. Clear the school and the courts... ignored..it and my parents passing..and my son is now in a group home. And until they intervene my son was an a and b honor roll student. This is SC state. They do not do everything they can. They do the exact opposite.

 

[belleatdisney]

Seriously, this overreach is why people choose to homeschool.

Schools here get funding based on # of students. It is all about money.

 

[monsterkitty]

Seriously, this overreach is why people choose to homeschool.

Schools here get funding based on # of students. It is all about money.

While this is a zombie thread, I am still going to respond to this.

Schools have to follow state laws regarding attendance. In my state it has nothing to do with funding as we don't count students every day but rather during a 10-day window the last week of September and the first week of October. The average of the number of students in school during that 10-day period is how our funding is set for the year.

We have kids who would miss weeks at a time. We have kids who stay home to babysit several times a week. Kids who stay up all night playing video games and are too tired to come to school so their parents let them stay home. We have some students who attend only a few days a month because their parents do not make them go to school. These are not kids who have school related anxiety. These are kids who just don't come to school.

An attendance contract is set up for those students after 10 absences. After 14 absences parents must provide a doctor's note or proof of a family emergency. For students who have severe medical needs, we have an online school in the district and students can float in between online and in person when they are well enough. (This was why it was so easy for us to go remote last year).

If parents feel that the is over-stepping their boundaries for school attendance, take it up with the state law makers who make schools follow the attendance laws. If the school is more strict than the state laws, then take it up with the school board, not the school. The school has no control over the policies. They just enforce the policies.

 

[brockash]

My niece’s (brother’s daughter) mom lost custody of her. The way we found out about her horrible parenting was that the school took her to court over truancy. Her daughter missed more than 30 days in 3 months. They brought her in, demanded a drug test, she failed the drug test, found out she had been living in her car and dealing meth. If not for truancy we wouldn’t have known, as they lived in an entirely different state. The mom is in jail now, not for truancy but for the drugs, but that’s what started the process.

This...so many times bigger issues are found from the smaller concerns. If a child is missing tons of school and it's obvious they're struggling severely academically then yes, that's neglect. Their child is not able to learn age appropriate information due to the parent not getting them to school and/or teaching them on their own. I don't think truancy alone is neglectful, but truancy resulting in a child severely struggling academically in my opinion is.

 

[Pink Partridge]

..and my son is now in a group home. And until they intervene my son was an a and b honor roll student.

Is there more to this story? Your honor roll student was taken from you because he was absent from school?

 

[msjprincess]

My son has been taken for truancy, he had a doctors excuse, both my parents passed away in the same month, being both, my son and I are/were the only child, and at once it was literally raining in our home, so we had to move into a hotel, all legal excuses that wasn't excused. It started with my asthmatic son having the flu out with a doctors note. Clear the school and the courts... ignored..it and my parents passing..and my son is now in a group home. And until they intervene my son was an a and b honor roll student. This is SC state. They do not do everything they can. They do the exact opposite.

How old is he and his many days of school did he miss?

 

[CaoilinnsMom]

I agree. Education is important, but parents today are basically always wrong in someone's mind:
If you keep your kid home, you're a bad parent because they're truant.
If you send your kid to school with a cold, you're a bad parent because you're getting the other kids sick.
If you physically force them to go, you're a bad parent because someone thinks you're abusing them...

It's excessive in this case, and I do think the mom (and probably the kid) could do with some counseling. But I think it happens on a smaller scale to a lot of parents. They make a wrong decision in the moment because they're afraid of making a different wrong one.

Schools are definitely not going after parents unless it is a last resort. We are always willing to work with families that are in distress. Sometimes truancy is the only way to get a kid who has completely fallen of the radar the attention and care they need. They may be at home watching siblings with no electricity, food, or other necessities.

 

[Turn the Page]

Schools are definitely not going after parents unless it is a last resort. We are always willing to work with families that are in distress. Sometimes truancy is the only way to get a kid who has completely fallen of the radar the attention and care they need. They may be at home watching siblings with no electricity, food, or other necessities.

That depends on the school district and how funding is set up. In Kentucky I knew a family who had 2 kids, neither had any concerns c about grades or truancy or anything like that. The family went on a week long vacation, the kids had the work done and turned in before they left but when they got home the school threatened them with truancy court if the kids missed any more school. Schoo l s in that state are funded by the number of students in s c hool on average each day.

Contrast that with Michigan. They have 2 pupil count days per year. One in October, one in February I think, there is a huge push think make sure your child is in school on those days. Truancy court is a thing but you have to work hard to get threatened with it. And a one week family vacation won't do it.