Putting a stop to truancy

"I have a stomach ache; my head hurts." They’re words parents hear when their children are sick — and also when they simply don’t want to go to school that day. So how can parents tell the difference?

Family Services Director of Community Prevention Services Kelly Brown said with the range of potential social, emotional and academic issues today’s youth face, there are questions parents need to ask before allowing their kids to stay home from school.

"I don’t think parents really see it for what it is," she said of the symptoms that are sometimes actually excuses. "The parents may suspect something else going on, but maybe they don’t have the time to truly ask the questions we need to ask.

"It’s key to look for a pattern: They loved and wanted to go to school, had no problem getting there, and now all of a sudden we have a problem — they’re sick all the time and don’t want to go. That’s a sign there’s something else going on, and that’s a sign for a parent that we need to begin to ask some in-depth questions and not take that stomach ache or headache at face value."

For whatever reasons individual students try to dodge school, it became evident to school and law enforcement officials and community leaders around 2005 (through results of a risk assessment conducted by Norristown Area Communities That Care) that truancy, which is linked to many problems troubling Norristown youth (substance abuse, sexual activity, suicide attempts), was becoming increasingly problematic in the Norristown Area School District.

According to an article Brown and Norristown Police Department Detective Lt. Kevin McKeon contributed to Police Chief Magazine in August 2008, NASD "has one of the highest incidences of truancy in the state of Pennsylvania." Between the 1999-2000 and 2005-2006 school years, the district had a 64.5 percent increase in unexcused absences, which went from 34,198 to 54,322.

Truancy, defined as any unlawful, unexcused absence from school, is an issue that affects "the whole gamut of families," Brown said. And as far as which grades are impacted, she said the majority of truant students in NASD are in middle school and high school, although truancy begins as early as kindergarten for some students.

In Norristown, "truant youth are often the perpetrators and victims of crime" occurring within the borough, McKeon and Brown’s article says. But despite the widespread misconception that truant students are only those involved in drugs and crime, Brown said "troubled kids" actually represent the "smallest percentage" of NASD’s truant students, and in fact the "larger majority of kids have social, emotional and academic issues. "Kids in more affluent neighborhoods are not termed ‘truant’ because their parents are writing a note, but the reasons are similar," she said.

After studying national models for truancy reduction and finding none were a perfect fit, NPD and community partners created the Norristown Truancy Abatement Initiative and implemented it in January 2006. The initiative began with enforcement, but Brown and McKeon said it became clear early on that community policing strategies alone would not begin to address the root causes of truancy.

"Root causes vary just as children and families vary," Brown said. "It may be a bullying issue; a family management problem; an issue where the child is behind academically and just feels they can’t compete so they don’t bother going to school; it might be depression."

Students are permitted 10 absences in a school year, and any absence beyond that (even with a parent’s note) is considered unexcused without a doctor’s note, Brown said. "But most excessive, unexcused absences are not due to medical reasons."

A youth survey conducted in 2009 across sixth, eighth, 10th and 12th grades revealed a large percentage of NASD students were experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety. In fact, more than 50 percent of students in each grade answered "yes" when asked if they felt depressed or sad most days in the past year. "It tends to be the reason why a number of kids can’t get themselves moving and motivated to get to school," Brown said.

In January, NPD made 33 arrests and issued additional warrants at numerous households of parents who were warned "more than seven times not only by the school district but also by police and the court system" about their students’ truancy, McKeon said. "It’s not about the arrests," he said. "It’s about parents taking an active role in their child’s education and getting them to school."

For a student’s first and second unexcused absences, parents receive letters after each, notifying them of the consequences continued absences would bring. After the third unexcused absence, parents must then attend a Truancy Elimination Plan meeting with their child and a school district representative. A fourth unexcused absence results in a citation and required court hearing, where the family is referred to a social service agency (19 including Family Services have teamed up with Norristown police for this initiative) for counseling, tutoring, mentoring — whatever free services are appropriate.

"A lot of times parents feel helpless," Brown said. "And that’s where our services step in."

She said schools call Family Services as a method of prevention and early intervention when they recognize attendance problems, but despite their outreach efforts, cases sometimes do still reach the point of a court hearing. "Then we conduct an assessment of the family to try to hone in on the root cause of why the child is truant," she said. Free counseling begins, and the family’s progress is monitored by Family Services.

"We don’t look at (the truancy initiative) as a negative for families; we’re really looking at it as a positive for families," Brown said. "Families who’ve been through (the process) are so relieved someone was willing to come in and help. Parents who have stress (whether related to unemployment, family violence) sometimes feel so isolated that they think they don’t have the resources to help their kids the way they want to. The majority respond extremely positively to accessing support and working with our people."

Truancy is a big topic discussed at the free Parent Education Programs conducted by Family Services and held at different locations throughout the school year. The goal is to help parents recognize early warning signs and identify risk factors, Brown said, and also to encourage parents of children repeatedly missing school to contact Family Services so they can begin to work with them before a citation is issued.

McKeon said Norristown’s crack-down on truancy is a "state model," and that he and Brown have spoken before judges, teachers and other interested parties about its impact. "We (the police) do the truancy program because we believe that if you want to revitalize Norristown, you have to educate your youth, and also because you can’t arrest yourself out of a problem. We’re looking at crime differently in Norristown," he said, referring to the borough’s daytime curfew ordinance and the community policing strategies to enforce it.

If between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. on school days police see kids hanging around borough streets, McKeon said they arrest the truant students and take them back to school. "We now have an officer who drives around and looks for truant kids (three days a week)."

Not only have truancy levels gone down, McKeon said (according to numbers he reported in Police Chief Magazine, between the 2005-2006 and 2007-2008 school years — the time period the initiative got under way — the overall rate of unexcused absences in NASD decreased by 27 percent, from 55,136 to 40,462), but also NPD has seen a 30 percent reduction in Part I crimes (homicide, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, arson) between 2006 and 2009.

While the crime drop is not solely because of the truancy initiative, he said, "I can say that it was a contributing factor."

The enforcement aspect of the Norristown Truancy Abatement Initiative, funded by The William Penn Foundation and the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency through Norristown Weed and Seed, focuses only on the borough, where the district’s largest population resides. But family management issues resulting in truancy, Brown said, extend beyond borough lines, to East and West Norriton townships.

"If you don’t have kids who are successful in school — they didn’t have enough credits to graduate and dropped out — these are not going to be kids who bring anything back into the community," she said. Which is why another bullet point of the initiative is to change community norms regarding school commitment and violence, and to increase the value of education.

Many NASD students view a high school diploma as an unachievable goal — probably because nearly 30 percent of Norristown’s adult population has not completed high school, according to McKeon and Brown’s article.

"The biggest benefits I see," Brown said of the initiative, "are kids whose needs are met, whose issues are being addressed and who are better able to function in school and in the community, whether academically, behaviorally or socially."

Melissa Brooks
7 March 2010

http://www.timesherald.com/articles/2010/03/07/life/doc4b916261c1405875068193.txt 

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