Truancy still a problem in Youngstown, Warren

There's good news and bad news for the Youngstown City School District in the latest state report card on attendance. The good news is that the number of pupils who were in class in the 1999-2000 school year was higher than the number in the previous year -- 90.4 percent to 89.9 percent. But the bad news is that even with this improvement, Youngstown remained in the category of the 10 worst districts in Ohio in terms of attendance.
Warren also occupied a spot among the bottom 10, and while its ninth place was better than Youngstown's seventh position -- being in first place means you had the worst attendance of all -- the school district's rate of 90.9 percent last year reflected an erosion from the 93 percent the year before.
According to the Ohio Department of Education, the statewide rate average attendance was 93 percent, with the best rate of 99.4 percent recorded by Hope Academy in Summit County. The Cleveland School District was at the bottom of the list with 83.2 percent.
Learning: It may seem like stating the obvious, but there is a direction correlation between student attendance and student success. If children aren't in school they can't learn. That message has become the mantra of school officials, politicians and even editorial writers. Indeed, under a state law that went into effect at the beginning of this school year, schools and the courts have been given more power to track down truants. And parents are being held responsible for the actions of their children as never before.
Yet, as the state report card for last year clearly shows, inner city school districts face the greatest challenges. For instance, The Rayen School on Youngstown's North Side posted a rate of 84.2 percent, the lowest attendance of all 21 schools in the district. In Warren, Harding High School had 88.3 percent of its students in the classroom last year.
But all is not gloom and doom. Armed with the new state law and local policies, the Youngstown and Warren districts have launched programs to boost the number of children in the classrooms. Earlier this school year, Youngstown police conducted truancy raids, which resulted in pupils being nabbed and even some parents being cited for not keeping a close watch over their children.
In Warren, chronic truants have had to shovel snow, wash cars and walk roadways picking up trash as part of the court-ordered community service.
Safety issue: Such measures are necessary and justified. This is not only about the education of the child. It is also a safety issue that everyone in the community must recognize. Children should not be roaming the mean streets of the city, especially in those neighborhoods that have become the battlegrounds of warring drug gangs.
But as in other aspects of a child's education, such as learning to read, parental involvement is absolutely necessary in dealing with the problem of truancy.
Adults must be held to account for their children being absent from school.
In 1997, Struthers enacted an ordinance that makes it clear that the community holds parents responsible for their children's school attendance. A first offense is a minor misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $100. A second offense is a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 30 days in jail and up to a $250 fine. Subsequent offenses could result in a jail term of up to 60 days and a fine of between $250 and $500.
Bitter medicine, of course, but if a parent won't take responsibility for making sure that his or her child goes to school, who will?