Battling truancy demands long-term, diversified attack

Battling truancy demands
long-term, diversified attack

School skippers, beware!

Beginning Thursday, Youngstown police will have their radar targeted directly toward you. Citywide sweeps will be conducted daily to apprehend students aimlessly wandering the streets and to prevent the crime that truancy too often breeds.

This anti-truancy initiative, funded by a $230,335 grant from the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services, bodes well in the short term toward ensuring errant Youngstown students wind up back in school where they belong. In the long term, however, truancy in Youngstown like truancy everywhere, is a major social ill with potentially disastrous consequences for students and for the communities the truants roam. It demands a tough multi-pronged and ongoing attack to remedy.

Tougher laws

To its credit, Ohio has strengthened its laws on truancy in recent years. Today chronically truant students - defined as those students who have 15 or more unexcused absences in a school year - and their parents are subject to aggressive court intervention.

Sanctions against parents who fail to ensure their children attend school may include mandatory mediation and parenting classes, up to 70 hours of community service and/or a fine up to $500. In some cases, they face time in jail.

Youngstown’s truancy initiative aims to curb student absenteeism before the student and parents wind up in a courtroom. That philosophy not only serves students well; it also protects communities.

As Lt. Robin Lees, commander of the Mahoning Valley Law Enforcement Task Force, put it: “Nationwide, studies show that most daylight burglaries are committed by kids who should be in school. They also sell drugs and commit petty thefts.”

But police can only do so much to combat truancy and its larger anti-social repercussions. That’s why we’re pleased that a portion of the grant will target other programs. Youngstown can use those funds to fortify existing intervention initiatives that re-engage students to attend school, or choose alternative educational programs and that work with parents to stress the importance of ensuring regular attendance.

Proven success

Such programs have paid off. Over the past five years, for example, graduation rates in Youngstown have increased dramatically from about two-thirds of all potential students to about 93 percent of students last academic year.

Still the district must be vigilant to ensure no students slip through the cracks. Truancy also affects school districts’ academic standings. Graduation rates and student retention are important criteria in Ohio’s annual state report cards. If Youngstown lessens truancy, its academic grade and overall reputation should improve as well.

We therefore welcome the student dragnet this winter and spring, but hope that it is not another Band-aid that brings only short-term healing. We recall all too well other outside-funded crime initiatives in Youngstown that worked effectively for the moment but had little lasting impact.

The grant provides the district with opportunities to build upon its successes in increasing student retention. It’s therefore incumbent upon school officials, parents, police and juvenile court authorities to profit from this funding surge in the war on truancy. But once the grant dries up, all parties must continue aggressively to attack truancy and its many spinoff ills.