Get these kids to school
Truants could get a visit from the sheriff
MUSTANG — Deputy Doug Gerten parked his patrol car along a quiet street in a Mustang subdivision, walked up to the brick condominium and was just a few steps up the driveway before a woman hurriedly walked out of the garage, holding back tears as she explained her situation.
“He just doesn’t want to go to school,” the single mother said about her teenage son, who refused to leave his room. “He won’t listen to me.”
Gerten, who is a member of the Canadian County Sheriff’s juvenile investigations unit, walked into the house and knocked on the teenager’s bedroom door.
“Let’s go,” Gerten instructed the boy, who was absent from his ninth-grade classes.
As the boy yelled back, his mother shook her head.
“I don’t know what to do with this child,” she said.
“Stick to your guns,” Gerten responded.
After a few minutes of negotiating at the bedroom door, the teenager left the house and decided to
let his mother take him to school, rather than being chauffeured in the back of a patrol car.
Gerten drove behind the mother until she reached Mustang High School and verified that her son entered the front doors.
“If you get these kids in school, you can avoid a lot of future problems,” Gerten said. “A lot of times just having an officer show up at their house is enough to get them to school.”
Since Canadian County’s six-deputy truancy unit launched in 2011, dropout rates at schools across the county have plummeted, while attendance has improved.
Dropouts decline
With a dropout rate of 13 percent in 2010, Mustang High School’s current rate is at 5.6 percent.
El Reno High School had a dropout rate near 13 percent seven years ago, but has seen it fall to nearly zero.
High schools in Piedmont, Union City, Calumet and Yukon have also seen significant declines in the number of students who drop out of school.
All are well below the state average of 7.2 percent.
When a student misses more than a few days of school, a sheriff is likely to show up at the house.
Sometimes it’s a matter of spooking a teenager who was just ditching class.
Other times it may be discovering a situation at home involving drug use, poverty or abuse.
“I was just hearing about a lot of the school attendance issues, especially with young kids, that wasn’t being addressed,” said Bob Hughey, a district judge at the Canadian County Children’s Justice Center, who helped launch the program.
Hughey figured the involvement of the sheriff would not only address the county’s student attendance issues, but drive up high school graduation rates, which would lead to fewer issues with drugs, government assistance and criminal activity.
Attendance officers at each school make referrals to the deputies when a student reaches 10 absences in a semester or four absences in a 30 day period, which is based on state statute.
“If the student is over the age of 12, then we file a truancy case against the child and they are put on probation, just like if they had committed a delinquent act or crime,” Hughey said.
“If they are under the age of 12, then it’s a parenting issue and it’s a child welfare case.”
Intervention program
When a student reaches the state truancy threshold they would have already received a letter from the school and instructions to attend a truancy intervention program.
Parents are often motivated to get their child to school because they don’t want a deputy showing up at the front door, Hughey said.
For others, there is a need for court intervention and services to address substance abuse and mental health issues.
Courts have always had the option of fining parents who don’t get their children to school.
“But it doesn’t address the underlying issue of why the kid is missing school, so we try to stay away from that,” Hughey said.
The deputies perform a variety of duties for the children’s justice center, including transports for parents and children to court hearings, security at the center and regular visits to schools across the county.
“We go to the schools and give them an extra tool,” said James Seidel, a deputy with the sheriff’s office.
The benefit of using deputies to enforce school attendance is if a crime is observed an arrest can be made on the spot, Seidel said.
Hughey said school attendance statistics show the program’s success and he also predicts the county will see lower crime rates over the next generation.
“My motivation was really helping the child,” Hughey said. “Helping the child reach their potential and that’s hard to do if they aren’t in school and don’t get an education.”