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

[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.

I love people like you who believe there should be no negative repercussions of a global pandemic.
Would you have walked into a school to teach in August 2020 before a vaccine came out? Many people refused to send their kids. By March 2021, yes, I agree that schools should have fully reopened but before that is dicey. Are you going to use the pandemic excuse forever?

[Anonymous]

The streets would be safer if the kids were in school or jail. This is where the crime is coming from these people roaming the streets

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I love people like you who believe there should be no negative repercussions of a global pandemic.
Would you have walked into a school to teach in August 2020 before a vaccine came out? Many people refused to send their kids. By March 2021, yes, I agree that schools should have fully reopened but before that is dicey. Are you going to use the pandemic excuse forever?

Kids in many states were in school in august 2020.

[Anonymous]

This is the definition of a parenting issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is the definition of a parenting issue.

Yeah, but we all bear the consequences.

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


This could account for incremental growth in elementary but not the incredibly high rates in HS …


huh? by high school you have the cumulative effect of years of housing instability and so many kids who are then behind in school as a result. Many of them drop out by high school or effectively drop out by never attending.
Trust me, it's all connected. Ask anyone who actually works in the trenches of social services, day in and day out.

You house people, you will solve about 95% of DC's problems in a generation. It is the #1, 2, 3 concern of almost every DC resident who lives under the poverty line. It's pretty much the only thing I get asked about every day.
There are the people that you think about as homeless (those who lives in tents) but then an absolute SEA of people who are what we call "marginally housed"----they live with relatives, friends, in unstable rent situations, etc. etc, etc.

DCUM doesn't want to hear about it. No one does. Because it's expensive and it doesn't seem fair (why should I bust my a$$ to pay my mortgage when XYZ gets a $4k housing voucher for free?). But it's the root
of many problems in DC.

Off my soapbox.

Yes, it is NOT fair. What would make it palatable is conditioning receipt of that free housing on mandatory birth control and not producing any more kids. And conditioning continued receipt of that free housing on making sure the kids you do have get to school and aren't truant. If your kids are school age, then you have to take job readiness/GED classes during the school day while your kids are in school. This is not just about housing.

[Anonymous]

It's not the job of school systems to solve ALL of society's problems! Educators can't be everything for kids. At some point, it's about desire to do better. No one can make anyone do anything. This city spends millions on programming for the underserved and troubled. What else can be done?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


This could account for incremental growth in elementary but not the incredibly high rates in HS …


huh? by high school you have the cumulative effect of years of housing instability and so many kids who are then behind in school as a result. Many of them drop out by high school or effectively drop out by never attending.
Trust me, it's all connected. Ask anyone who actually works in the trenches of social services, day in and day out.

You house people, you will solve about 95% of DC's problems in a generation. It is the #1, 2, 3 concern of almost every DC resident who lives under the poverty line. It's pretty much the only thing I get asked about every day.
There are the people that you think about as homeless (those who lives in tents) but then an absolute SEA of people who are what we call "marginally housed"----they live with relatives, friends, in unstable rent situations, etc. etc, etc.

DCUM doesn't want to hear about it. No one does. Because it's expensive and it doesn't seem fair (why should I bust my a$$ to pay my mortgage when XYZ gets a $4k housing voucher for free?). But it's the root
of many problems in DC.

Off my soapbox.

Yes, it is NOT fair. What would make it palatable is conditioning receipt of that free housing on mandatory birth control and not producing any more kids. And conditioning continued receipt of that free housing on making sure the kids you do have get to school and aren't truant. If your kids are school age, then you have to take job readiness/GED classes during the school day while your kids are in school. This is not just about housing.

+1

Some parents just choose not to send their kids to school. They don’t want to get up and get them dressed or it’s raining or it’s a Monday. Lots of excuses. Make some of these social benefits contingent on school attendance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it is NOT fair. What would make it palatable is conditioning receipt of that free housing on mandatory birth control and not producing any more kids. And conditioning continued receipt of that free housing on making sure the kids you do have get to school and aren't truant. If your kids are school age, then you have to take job readiness/GED classes during the school day while your kids are in school. This is not just about housing.

Right. I've been critical of the voucher program, but I'd actually support it if D.C. demanded accountability in exchange for giving people a massive handout. We'll give you free housing, but you'll lose it if you break the law. You have to go into rehab if you have a substance abuse problem, you have to make sure your kids are going to school and being taken care of. You have to be in some sort of job training program, or work for a job that D.C. lines up for you. Social workers can check in frequently and update what you have to do, unlike the current situation where they just knock on your door once a month and you can ignore them.

The goal should be to get people on the right track so that they can start supporting themselves, not have them on the government dole for life. That's another reason why putting these people in expensive apartments is idiotic. Either you're expecting D.C. to provide them with free expensive apartments for decades, or you're putting them in an area they can't afford on their own that they'll have to eventually move out of if they ever do get off the program.

If people say the answer is to turn these people's lives around, make programs that actual make that happen. Just giving a junkie a free apartment so they can shoot up all the time isn't solving problems, it's creating them. It also leads to induced demand - if you're a homeless addict in another state and learn that D.C. is giving people free luxury apartments, of course you're going to want to come here. For some reason these people talk endlessly about induced demand when it comes to roads, but can't fathom it when they talk about massive government handouts.

We had 5,900 homeless a decade ago. Advocates said "Just give everyone housing, that will solve everything!" Now we have over 8,000 people on the voucher programs, we have new shelters all over the city, and we have more tents than we had before. What's the response from the advocates? Reflection that their policies failed massively, leading to a much larger homeless population? Nope, they just mindlessly repeat the same thing they said a decade ago: "Just give everyone housing, that will solve everything!"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is 100% a parent issue and responsibility.

I agree. But I also wonder about some of the reasons behind the numbers. For example, my Banneker student was deemed chronically truant by DCPS last school year because he got covid twice and had to stay home until negative! (He still managed excellent grades though.) DCPS hounded me too about it. I had threatening letters and someone from central office called me then things calmed down a bit. I don’t understand how a parent could not be on top of attendance!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

This is one of the several reasons why I realized that the activists and progressives on the Council were just posturing, and don't actually believe anything they say. Every time someone says we should lock up the criminals, these people go, no, that's not the answer, we need to provide services to get at the root of the problem.

OK, but the schools are arguably the greatest service that gets provided to these families. It serves as a childcare, it serves as a place where the kids have activities that will keep them away from crime, it serves as a place to feed the kids with free breakfast and lunch, it serves as a place where professionals can check up on the kids. And our elected officials (and most of the activists) were fine with keeping them closed or partially-closed for a year and a half. Robert White was even recently arguing in favor of more closings. When Ferebee tried to have a very limited reopening in the fall of 2020 that would have targeted at risk kids, the Washington Teachers Union had a walkout, and he backed off. And people were fine with this.

So I don't really want to hear these people spread their fact concern about how they want more resources for these kids to address the root cause of these issues. These people are only all to happy to cut the most important resources for these vulnerable families whenever they feel like, with absolutely no self-reflection.

This is such a dumb take. The kids who are truant aren't the kids of people like you. The "broken trust" didn't cause kids 3 grade levels behind to stop coming to school. Go away.

[Anonymous]

DC needs to come up with innovative ways to get kids to school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

This is one of the several reasons why I realized that the activists and progressives on the Council were just posturing, and don't actually believe anything they say. Every time someone says we should lock up the criminals, these people go, no, that's not the answer, we need to provide services to get at the root of the problem.

OK, but the schools are arguably the greatest service that gets provided to these families. It serves as a childcare, it serves as a place where the kids have activities that will keep them away from crime, it serves as a place to feed the kids with free breakfast and lunch, it serves as a place where professionals can check up on the kids. And our elected officials (and most of the activists) were fine with keeping them closed or partially-closed for a year and a half. Robert White was even recently arguing in favor of more closings. When Ferebee tried to have a very limited reopening in the fall of 2020 that would have targeted at risk kids, the Washington Teachers Union had a walkout, and he backed off. And people were fine with this.

So I don't really want to hear these people spread their fact concern about how they want more resources for these kids to address the root cause of these issues. These people are only all to happy to cut the most important resources for these vulnerable families whenever they feel like, with absolutely no self-reflection.

This is such a dumb take. The kids who are truant aren't the kids of people like you. The "broken trust" didn't cause kids 3 grade levels behind to stop coming to school. Go away.

DP. Completely agree on the dumb take. PP lives in a crazy privileged world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC needs to come up with innovative ways to get kids to school.

DC also needs to find a way to incentivize parents to care about where their kids are and what they are doing. Truancy needs to be enforceable and that starts with the parents. I think if your 14 yr old is chronically absent and committing crimes, you should lose any city services you’re receiving. Maybe harsh, but then at least both the adult and the child in the household might realize there are real consequences for their behavior.