Truancy In DC HS Is Shocking - Why No Urgency To Address?!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Send the parents to mandatory parenting classes.

And what if they don't go--put them in jail?

I think you'd find with many truant students that the parent is already in jail, or 80-something great-grandma has guardianship, or the kid's placed in foster care in Bowie and can't get to school easily, or the kid is herself a parent.

I'm not saying that attendance is unfixable. Just that it's really hard and requires a lot of resources and skilled workers with low caseloads. And the place to start is probably not high school. How many kindergartners miss 20 days a year? How many 5th graders?

Definitely. Same for the parents letting their kids run around and carjack and steal coats.

The parents are in jail themselves which is why they aren’t around to keep their kids from carjacking.

[Anonymous]

Why no push?

DCPS spent time, money and energy renaming schools when kids were in virtual school. Instead of focusing on getting kids into school buildings, they wanted schools to not be named after any white person.

Now you’re surprised this same district isn’t fighting truancy?

DCPS leadership either doesn’t prioritize education or simply is ignorant and doesn’t know any better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Send the parents to mandatory parenting classes.

And what if they don't go--put them in jail?

I think you'd find with many truant students that the parent is already in jail, or 80-something great-grandma has guardianship, or the kid's placed in foster care in Bowie and can't get to school easily, or the kid is herself a parent.

I'm not saying that attendance is unfixable. Just that it's really hard and requires a lot of resources and skilled workers with low caseloads. And the place to start is probably not high school. How many kindergartners miss 20 days a year? How many 5th graders?

Definitely. Same for the parents letting their kids run around and carjack and steal coats.

The parents are in jail themselves which is why they aren’t around to keep their kids from carjacking.

Really - the moms are in jail? I’d assume most of the kids carjacking are from single parent homes with possible a father in jail. More likely they have a father that is MIA. Maybe he’s in jail or maybe he’s not. Statistically, that’s what is most likely. Jail is predominantly men - around 93%.

[Anonymous]

It’s wild that DCPS paid 1/2 mil on consultants to address truancy. Seriously wtf.

I agree that the answer is to expel kids who are chronically truant. Let’s make sure the kids who want to go to school have access to education. The other kids can be filtered into an online GED program.

[Anonymous]

There is no accountability in schools anymore. Since covid, students miss class, do not complete assignments, fail, and teachers are forced by their administrators to pass them along to the next grade. They do not come to school because there are no consequences if they don't. There are also no consequences for students who are tardy. They get full credit for being in an entire class even if they only were in class for 5 minutes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s wild that DCPS paid 1/2 mil on consultants to address truancy. Seriously wtf.

I agree that the answer is to expel kids who are chronically truant. Let’s make sure the kids who want to go to school have access to education. The other kids can be filtered into an online GED program.

Yep and these consultants let the school district officials sit around doing nothing because taking action would affect poor families and POC. Of course there's no analysis done of the impact on these kids not getting an actual education.

[Anonymous]

I don't know how they figure out these truancy figures, but I can tell you that there are many families that will allow their JR kids (particularly seniors) to essentially stop going to school during the month of June when AP tests are done and the teacher has basically said the class is done. The school year is basically over, yet there are 2-3 more weeks of literally nothing happening...it's just daycare for 18 year olds that don't need daycare.

Again, these are high-performing kids who are going to good colleges. The AP schedule makes it so that you have to teach a year's worth of class by the beginning of May so that kids are prepared for the AP tests that are largely done by May 15.

[Anonymous]

Ok, I'll be that person.

These are the consequences of prolonged school closures. The truancy rates and the juvenile crime issues.

If we want to address these issues, we need politicians and policy-makers who are willing to come in and say, out loud: We broke trust and destroyed relationships between schools and families during the Covid closures. We abandoned the kids in the district who most desperately need support from the education system. We need a plan that directly addresses this problem and finds a way to get these kids back into classrooms, back connected with the functional, law-abiding aspects of our community. This will likely require direct family intervention that addresses all aspects of the dysfunction that was made much worse during the pandemic -- mental health, substance abuse, domestic violence, and criminality. We need funding to hire more truancy officers, social workers, and family services counselors and we need to start identifying the kids and families who need serious intervention and doing whatever we can to at LEAST return to pre-Covid numbers.

You can't treat a disease when you refuse to name it. This isn't about schools miscategorizing absences. This is about a broken system that wasn't doing great pre-Covid but absolutely collapsed during school closures. We need to repair it.

I am so angry that no one will talk about these issues with the directness and honesty that is needed. Are we still pretending school closures were just inconveniences for rich white people and actually helped poor communities in the city? Really? After the test scores, the truancy rates, and the juvenile crime stats all make it abundantly clear that the opposite is true?

We messed up. Schools should have reopened in July 2020 (yes, July, the push should have been to get in-person summer school for all at risk kids ASAP and then everyone back in August). It's fine to acknowledge people were scared and that a lot of other cities made a similar mistake. But it WAS a mistake. We need to fix it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ok, I'll be that person.

These are the consequences of prolonged school closures. The truancy rates and the juvenile crime issues.

If we want to address these issues, we need politicians and policy-makers who are willing to come in and say, out loud: We broke trust and destroyed relationships between schools and families during the Covid closures. We abandoned the kids in the district who most desperately need support from the education system. We need a plan that directly addresses this problem and finds a way to get these kids back into classrooms, back connected with the functional, law-abiding aspects of our community. This will likely require direct family intervention that addresses all aspects of the dysfunction that was made much worse during the pandemic -- mental health, substance abuse, domestic violence, and criminality. We need funding to hire more truancy officers, social workers, and family services counselors and we need to start identifying the kids and families who need serious intervention and doing whatever we can to at LEAST return to pre-Covid numbers.

You can't treat a disease when you refuse to name it. This isn't about schools miscategorizing absences. This is about a broken system that wasn't doing great pre-Covid but absolutely collapsed during school closures. We need to repair it.

I am so angry that no one will talk about these issues with the directness and honesty that is needed. Are we still pretending school closures were just inconveniences for rich white people and actually helped poor communities in the city? Really? After the test scores, the truancy rates, and the juvenile crime stats all make it abundantly clear that the opposite is true?

We messed up. Schools should have reopened in July 2020 (yes, July, the push should have been to get in-person summer school for all at risk kids ASAP and then everyone back in August). It's fine to acknowledge people were scared and that a lot of other cities made a similar mistake. But it WAS a mistake. We need to fix it.

You’re not wrong. But they’re not going to fix it. What prolonged school closure taught me is that we are on our own and cannot trust the public schools to do what makes sense. Everyone needs to make decisions that reflects that instead of trusting schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, Jackson Reed is high. Maybe that's how it stays over-capacity-a 1/3 of the kids aren't there on any given day?

We've talked about this before...how poor they are at keeping track. My kid was marked absent on the first day of school for first period even though they weren't required to show up. We've been referred to the court before even though I had proof that I'd written in each time. The vast majority of friends I've polled have issues with the attendance counselor there.

It's hard to work to correct a problem, when you can't even identify the problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, Jackson Reed is high. Maybe that's how it stays over-capacity-a 1/3 of the kids aren't there on any given day?

We've talked about this before...how poor they are at keeping track. My kid was marked absent on the first day of school for first period even though they weren't required to show up. We've been referred to the court before even though I had proof that I'd written in each time. The vast majority of friends I've polled have issues with the attendance counselor there.

It's hard to work to correct a problem, when you can't even identify the problem.

Not at JR but at a MS where it is also apparently impossible to get the attendance people to correct an excused absence marked as unexcused. He has an IEP and is marked absent if he is getting services when they take attendance. I’ve sent him to school with a note for early dismissal to go to the dr and he is still marked as unexcused absence. Frequent attemps to fix this have not worked.

That said, it’s undeniable that the rates are much higher at some schools and increase for HS. It cannot all be attributable to bad admins.

[Anonymous]

They can't/won't prosecute juvenile violent crime in DC. They're not going to prosecute truancy.

[Anonymous]

IMO if you’re young and not in school, you should be working or in the military. Send the truants to military school or make them work to see what life is like when you’re uneducated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ok, I'll be that person.

These are the consequences of prolonged school closures. The truancy rates and the juvenile crime issues.

If we want to address these issues, we need politicians and policy-makers who are willing to come in and say, out loud: We broke trust and destroyed relationships between schools and families during the Covid closures. We abandoned the kids in the district who most desperately need support from the education system. We need a plan that directly addresses this problem and finds a way to get these kids back into classrooms, back connected with the functional, law-abiding aspects of our community. This will likely require direct family intervention that addresses all aspects of the dysfunction that was made much worse during the pandemic -- mental health, substance abuse, domestic violence, and criminality. We need funding to hire more truancy officers, social workers, and family services counselors and we need to start identifying the kids and families who need serious intervention and doing whatever we can to at LEAST return to pre-Covid numbers.

You can't treat a disease when you refuse to name it. This isn't about schools miscategorizing absences. This is about a broken system that wasn't doing great pre-Covid but absolutely collapsed during school closures. We need to repair it.

I am so angry that no one will talk about these issues with the directness and honesty that is needed. Are we still pretending school closures were just inconveniences for rich white people and actually helped poor communities in the city? Really? After the test scores, the truancy rates, and the juvenile crime stats all make it abundantly clear that the opposite is true?

We messed up. Schools should have reopened in July 2020 (yes, July, the push should have been to get in-person summer school for all at risk kids ASAP and then everyone back in August). It's fine to acknowledge people were scared and that a lot of other cities made a similar mistake. But it WAS a mistake. We need to fix it.

Maybe so. Agree that many more competent social workers are needed to see kids as individuals and get to the root of their truancy. Help connect the families to services they need.

And then provide more reasons for kids to go to school. Make the breakfasts and lunches delicious. Take home meals for families. More vocational training coop model where kids can earn a little money while learning a trade. Increase teacher pay across the board and give big bonuses to those who can really inspire kids.

[Anonymous]

I work as a case manager in DC. If you want to solve truancy in DC you need to solve the housing crisis.

There are ton of marginally housed kids (mostly with mothers) in DC. They bounce from DC to PG County and back again, often by the week or by the month or even by the day. From an aunt's basement to a friend's couch. Then they don't have cars or transportation so getting to school is hard if not impossible.

I really don't think DCUM has ANY idea of how prevalent this situation is.

You want school stability? House them all with fully subsidized housing. But that is super expensive----$2-4K/month per kid or family unit of kids.