Washington D.C. — The Character Education Partnership (CEP) is pleased to team-up with noted truancy expert, CEP advisor and retired Court Judge Irene Sullivan to help parents, educators and communities reduce children’s truancy during the school year.
Chronic truancy – missing more school than you attend – is identified as an early warning sign of a child potentially turning to delinquent behavior such as drug use, gang activity, crime, and dropping out of school.
Although there are no current statistics to measure to truancy in the US, according to the National Center for School Engagement, many metropolitan areas in the United States report thousands of unexcused absences each day.
According to Judge Sullivan, problems increase during the academic year when students are faced with the stresses of school. For many middle and high school students, a new school year brings discouragement, suspensions, and temptations instead of new challenges and friends. The resulting delinquency may often lead to an adult life plagued by family dysfunction, crime, poverty and unemployment.
Keeping kids off the streets and in school reduces juvenile crime, and therefore adult crime, ultimately saving tax dollars spent in prisons. Thus, the truancy problem isn’t one for parents and the education workforce alone. It’s a problem for entire communities.
“When students are kept engaged in school, the result is a much more educated and committed workforce for the entire community,” Judge Sullivan explained. “I have learned that bringing in the community is the secret to a successful truancy reduction program.”
After decades of working with troubled youth, Judge Sullivan offers up these tips to help parents, educators, and community leaders reduce truancy in their communities:
- Adopt a middle or high school near your business and talk to the principal to find out how your employees can help. Encourage your employees to be mentors and provide incentives for students who improve attendance.
- Work with your local Rotary Club of Chamber of Commerce to create signs for businesses to display that say “We don’t serve children during school hours. Please stay in school.” Then, live up to it.
- Volunteer to set up a table at a local shopping mall during school hours for school attendance specialists or social workers to intercept students and talk to them about why they are not attending school. There is always a reason, like transportation, lack of proper clothing, no alarm clock, bad bus schedule, violence in the home. Sometimes the problem can be easily fixed.
- Organize local businesses to work with your State Attorney on a campaign against truancy (funding poster programs and a media campaign.)
- Encourage your employees to be mentors in schools while “on the job” or by to become a “Big” in the Big Brother/Big Sister programs that focus on school attendance.
- Understand the mindset of a chronic truant. Sometimes they have so many hurdles to face, like flunking classes, poor nutrition, untreated mental health problems, and homelessness. They don’t understand the old adage that “95% of success in life is just in showing up,” so we have to understand them if we want to help them stay in school.
- Feature “turnaround teens” with some good publicity. These kids have amazing stories and need the business community to secure media attention, donate billboards, and use their stories on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to demonstrate the importance of school attendance. “Turnaround teens” can be great ambassadors, and just need a little financial support from businesses to get the message out.
- Create a competition between schools, or between kids, to improve school attendance. Nothing sparks a student’s interest more than competition and an award. I found this to be true even for chronic truants.
- Focus on foster kids. Those children whose backgrounds involve child abuse, abandonment, or neglect, or who are living temporarily in foster homes or with relatives, are often absent from school as they bounce from home to home, change schools, and become depressed and defeated with the challenges they face.
- Commit to fixing a “community problem.” When they did that in Brooklyn, NY a few years ago by looking for kids on the street during school hours, they found hundreds of missing and exploited kids who were kept from parents, guardians, and the schools. It’s amazing what an increased focus on truancy can accomplish. At the very least, if you spot a school-aged kid on the street during school hours, call the police. It may very well lead to a good intervention or even the rescue of a missing or exploited child.
Judge Irene Sullivan is a critical member of the extend team at CEP. She will address issues related to students and the courts at her in-depth workshop at the National Forum on Character Education on November 1st from 1-5PM EST. Participants will explore topics such as truancy, fights and bullying in school, unnecessary charges arising out of school incidents, and court support of teachers and other school staff. She and parenting expert Dr. Scott Sells will focus on the “deadly Ds”: divorce, dependency, domestic violence, and delinquency.
Character Education Partnership (CEP) is a national advocate and leader for the character education movement. Based in Washington, DC, we are a nonprofit, nonpartisan, nonsectarian coalition of organizations and individuals committed to fostering effective character education in our nation’s schools. We provide the vision, leadership and resources for school, families and communities to develop ethical citizens committed to building a just and caring world. For more information, www.character.org
