Truancy: first step to a lifetime of problems

When we were students, skipping school used to be a once in awhile lark–A day of fun while our friends sweated in the classroom. Years past, if a student were noticed walking around town during school hours, he was immediately reported by a shopkeeper, a neighbor, to parents or school authorities.

Today, truancy has become a major problem in the lives of some of our students. Chronic truancy creates a negative impact on the future of the truant student. In some cities in the United States, daily absences rate as high as 30 %. Students here in the PSS have about 5% truancy. While quite low, we must become aware of truancy with its related problems in students.

Truancy may be the beginning of a lifetime of problems for students who routinely skip school. A report complied by the Los Angeles County Office of Education on factors contributing to juvenile delinquency concluded that chronic absenteeism is the most powerful predictor of delinquent behavior.

Truant students are at a higher risk of being drawn into behavior involving drugs, alcohol, violence, and improper sex activities. A California deputy assistant attorney who handles truancy cases says he has “never seen a gang member who wasn’t a truant first.” Another report from the University of Maryland found that 51 percent of female juvenile detainees not in school at the time of their arrests tested positive for drug use. Still another study by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Drug Use Forecasting program reported that more than half (53%) of a group of 403 make juvenile arrestees in San Diego, California, tested positive for drug use when taken to juvenile hall.

For all this society pays the price. It costs students and education, resulting in reduced earning capacity. Some school districts lose hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in lost Federal funds. It costs businesses, which must pay to train uneducated workers. It costs taxpayers, who must pay higher taxes for law enforcement and welfare costs for dropouts who end up on welfare rolls or underemployed.

Parent neglect is a common cause of truancy. Many parents of truant students do not value education. Some children are kept at home to work or baby-sit preschool siblings. Others are prevented from attending school because of problems at home, at school, or in their neighborhood.

Because truancy often indicates bigger problems in a child’s life, we must be on the alert for any student who shows a history of chronic absenteeism. The Public School System must worker closer with parents, the Department of Public Safety and when necessary with the Department of Youth Services.

Unless we make the parents accountable and responsible, young people will become truant often. In some state, parents of children who are constantly truant are made to pay fines to encourage their children to attend school. The law clearly states that a child must attend school between the ages of 6 and 16 unless there is cause shown why he should not. And parents must be held responsible for their children’s school attendance. Perhaps a fine in the wallet may not be a bad idea.

All of the concerned agencies must provide intensive monitoring, counseling, and other family-strengthening services to truants and their families. When a family is close, parents and children accept responsibility for each other’s actions and work closely together. It is the dysfunctional family that the school must work closely with.

As mentioned earlier: truancy is the first indicator to a lifetime of problems, and we will have to pay the price for allowing it. Let’s stop it from becoming chronic.