Truancy and crime -- Wash Post article

[Anonymous]

Oddly, Brookland Middle, where the boy went who was killed breaking into cars, had excellent attendance in 23/24

https://dcps.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dcps/publication/attachments/DCPS%20Annual%20Attendance%20Report%20SY%202023-2024.pdf

But it was a good series. Especially the one on ankle monitors. Horrifying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Libs don’t believe parents should have any responsibility.

Do they ever hold parents responsible? No.

How would you hold parents responsible? I'm seriously curious and open to ideas. Parents should be responsible, but I'm not sure how best to do it.

Get child welfare involved? As the article says, that was the plan. The Child and Family Services Agency was supposed to investigate, which seems appropriate. But that "child welfare staff [said] parents were skeptical about cooperating with an agency that had the power to pry their children from them ... It’s like the police showing up.” So maybe it would be better to start with school staff?

Would threatening to throw parents in jail work? In a few cases, yes, but again parents would do their best not to help, and mostly kids would be worse off if their parents actually went to jail.

What are the "tough" options that would actually help?

Mandatory parenting classes and finally putting parents in jail.

For me, it’s two pronged: provide free contraceptives mailed in to all the addresses of low income families where there are 9yo girls and older; 2) stop indirect benefits to parents that are tied to the number of kids. Feed the kids, take them away from parents if they are homeless but don’t provide housing vouchers or monetary help

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Libs don’t believe parents should have any responsibility.

Do they ever hold parents responsible? No.

How would you hold parents responsible? I'm seriously curious and open to ideas. Parents should be responsible, but I'm not sure how best to do it.

Get child welfare involved? As the article says, that was the plan. The Child and Family Services Agency was supposed to investigate, which seems appropriate. But that "child welfare staff [said] parents were skeptical about cooperating with an agency that had the power to pry their children from them ... It’s like the police showing up.” So maybe it would be better to start with school staff?

Would threatening to throw parents in jail work? In a few cases, yes, but again parents would do their best not to help, and mostly kids would be worse off if their parents actually went to jail.

What are the "tough" options that would actually help?

Mandatory parenting classes and finally putting parents in jail.

Putting parents in jail will create a new issue because now who will supervise the children?

Group homes. Might actually be better than shitty parents

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So here is the other issue- are we talking about excused or only unexcused? Because to only investigate unexcused is truly an equity issue. There are kids in thr system with 50-60 excused absences. Their parents (or the kids themselves) know how to play the game to never get reported for truancy.

Because they are travelling internationally to see Grandma in Asia? Or because they are on the West Coast to go to an high-level sports competition? Or maybe a kid had mono?

Annoying for teachers, and not 'fair,' but these kids' truancy is not setting them on a path to crime.

Also, I am highly skeptical of your 50-60 number. Very few kids are missing a full 10+ weeks of school, and then the cause is generally medical.

+1, you cannot get to that many absences by working the system. We are at an EOTP Title 1 school, and if my kid is out sick for more then 3-4 consecutive days, I will be contacted by the school. I kept her home for extended periods for Covid and for a vocal issue and we had to produce doctors notes explaining the length of absence to get these excused. And that was even with calling in daily and reaching out to the teacher for makeup work, which I'm guessing some kid just trying to work the system would not do.

The bigger issue is that there are no true consequences for chronic truancy. In DCPS, being chronically truant can result in kids being forced to do summer school. Well (1) many of these kids will just be truant from summer school, and (2) for parents of younger kids, getting a summer school spot is a reward, as it functions as childcare and they can continue to take the approach of "my kid is someone else's problem."

In my observation, the chronically truant kids generally have some combination of absentee parents (often very young parents, un or underemployed, many do not have HS diplomas), housing instability, behavioral issues and diagnosed or undiagnosed special needs, home issues such as substance abuse, fighting, malnutrition, etc. The idea that you can fix this by fining the parents or threatening to take kids away or jail the parents? It just fundamentally misunderstands the issue. That would work in middle class parent with a lot to lose. That's not who has the chronically truant kids.

I get that. I feel terrible for the kids born to shitty parents. But I think the only way to correct that is to disincentivize these people from having children in the first place. And that would include fines and other legal penalties for the parents - both of them regardless of marital status - for the chronically truant. These "parents" are obviously not up for the task of parenting. But if these terrible parents are paying the costs of their offspring's deviancy and crime, it will send a signal to others to get it together before they have children.

It'll never happen in DC because of race issues. But if you don't address the parenting issue, you'll never fix youth truancy and crime. That is far beyond the scope of teachers and schools. Shitty parents are the fundamental problem.

You are not going to disincentivize 15 yr olds from having babies by telling them that in 7 years, they could face a fine if their child is truant at school.

Also, imposing fines on people in poverty is pointless. They won't pay them. So you either have to be willing to jail them for unpaid fines (please note that having a parent in jail/prison is a major at risk factor and is likely to result in more truancy, not less, as kids are shuttled to relatives' homes or in and out of foster care) or they will just rack up fines that never get paid.

+1 this is all absolutely true and someone is going to say you're woke for it nonetheless

What’s your suggestion?

I have had parents pick up a kid at 8pm and ZERO consequences from the school or police. The parent is chronically late to pick up or the child misses school a lot or comes at 11am.
This is not an atypical experience.

I think a nice option would be busses for all students and more police or some kind of system to send kids to their schools if they are caught wandering the streets during school hours.

What should the school do in this case? Suspend the kid? Report the family? What consequence can the school give that punishes an 8 pm pickup and/or deters the parent from doing it again?

Is that what you are seriously getting from this?
Where did I say punish the student??

For one thing calling the parent in to have a discussion. Reporting to CPS and the police and insisting they actually document it.

What will deter them is someone coming to their door being in their business. Having the actual possibility of losing their child.

Please take a breath -- it was a serious question not a sarcastic one nor one that was critical of you. I work in a school and I've no answers. It feels like we've tried everything. Calling CPS - dozens of times for the same family. Having the police come. Driving the kid home and knocking repeatedly on the door and then having the police meet us at the house. We've hired social workers and parent engagement liaisons who work directly with struggling families. It's so frustrating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Libs don’t believe parents should have any responsibility.

Do they ever hold parents responsible? No.

How would you hold parents responsible? I'm seriously curious and open to ideas. Parents should be responsible, but I'm not sure how best to do it.

Get child welfare involved? As the article says, that was the plan. The Child and Family Services Agency was supposed to investigate, which seems appropriate. But that "child welfare staff [said] parents were skeptical about cooperating with an agency that had the power to pry their children from them ... It’s like the police showing up.” So maybe it would be better to start with school staff?

Would threatening to throw parents in jail work? In a few cases, yes, but again parents would do their best not to help, and mostly kids would be worse off if their parents actually went to jail.

What are the "tough" options that would actually help?

Mandatory parenting classes and finally putting parents in jail.

For me, it’s two pronged: provide free contraceptives mailed in to all the addresses of low income families where there are 9yo girls and older; 2) stop indirect benefits to parents that are tied to the number of kids. Feed the kids, take them away from parents if they are homeless but don’t provide housing vouchers or monetary help

Just to buttress this, the Colorado program that provided free contraception at high schools cut unplanned pregnancies by something like 80%

[Anonymous]

FYI, Inspired Teaching's middle school has 22.6% of children missing at least 10 days a year; but it is very stratified by race. 26% of black students, 37% of Hispanic students and 14% of white students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FYI, Inspired Teaching's middle school has 22.6% of children missing at least 10 days a year; but it is very stratified by race. 26% of black students, 37% of Hispanic students and 14% of white students.

Good information. Where are you finding this data? Is there a link?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Libs don’t believe parents should have any responsibility.

Do they ever hold parents responsible? No.

How would you hold parents responsible? I'm seriously curious and open to ideas. Parents should be responsible, but I'm not sure how best to do it.

Get child welfare involved? As the article says, that was the plan. The Child and Family Services Agency was supposed to investigate, which seems appropriate. But that "child welfare staff [said] parents were skeptical about cooperating with an agency that had the power to pry their children from them ... It’s like the police showing up.” So maybe it would be better to start with school staff?

Would threatening to throw parents in jail work? In a few cases, yes, but again parents would do their best not to help, and mostly kids would be worse off if their parents actually went to jail.

What are the "tough" options that would actually help?

Mandatory parenting classes and finally putting parents in jail.

For me, it’s two pronged: provide free contraceptives mailed in to all the addresses of low income families where there are 9yo girls and older; 2) stop indirect benefits to parents that are tied to the number of kids. Feed the kids, take them away from parents if they are homeless but don’t provide housing vouchers or monetary help

Just to buttress this, the Colorado program that provided free contraception at high schools cut unplanned pregnancies by something like 80%

This. Some kids don’t have access. What is even better is an IUD because some kids forget to take pills. Good for 5-7 years.

Planned parenthood helps but to have it in the schools themselves would be the ideal.

[Anonymous]

To the poster asking where the school by school attendance information is:

https://schoolreportcard.dc.gov/lea/165/school/3064/report

go to 'student attendance' then 'explore student attendance' and then 'chronic absenteeism'