End truancy with support
The investigative piece, “The Price Kids Pay: Schools and police punish students with costly tickets for minor misbehavior” highlights a troubling practice that instead of recognizing typical adolescent behavior for what it might be, kids being kids, leads to the levying of exorbitant fines and fees, often without the right to counsel or due process. These fines can increase if not paid in a timely manner, setting already struggling families on a path of system involvement, tantamount to criminalizing poverty. In some cases, students have already been disciplined by their schools through detentions or suspensions. Then the municipalities penalize their families again in the form of hefty fines. Particularly disturbing is the reference to a $200 fine for truancy.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, educators have focused on the rising rates of chronic absenteeism. For some families, the pandemic was their first foray into truancy. For others, however, their truancy is rooted in generational poverty and their first step in the schoolto-prison pipeline. We often fail to recognize that for many families, the causes for truancy are deeply rooted in poverty, trauma, violence and behavioral health concerns, and do not reflect an adolescent’s whimsy.
The Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Court’s Truancy Court Program at the University of Baltimore School of Law has been tackling chronic absenteeism in Baltimore for 17 years. Our approach to addressing truancy is akin to peeling an onion — we peel the layers to identify and address the reasons why students miss school. Over the last decade, we have observed increased rates of housing instability, parental incarceration and families impacted by violence. Our voluntary program embraces a team approach (with a mentor, social worker, attorney, coordinator and volunteer judge), to identify families’ needs and connect them to much-needed resources and supports, such as housing, tutoring, counseling and food. We’ve also added restorative circles into our weekly programming, to give students a safe place where they can be heard, while teaching them skills like how to make better choices or better ways to resolve conflict. Facilitated workshops teach students important life skills such as financial literacy.
Supporting families should be the first step in tackling truancy. Instead of imposing fines, accusing parents of educational neglect, or incarcerating parents, we must help families address the barriers that keep students from school.
—Michele Hong, Baltimore, Maryland