Singers Joan Sebastian, Pepe Aguilar and Shaila Durcal, three major artists in Mexican music, are heading to 15 cities as part of a U.S. tour that kicks off June 22 in Washington, D.C., the artists announced during a press conference in Los Angeles.
Originally reported by Billboard, the tour will officially be called "Dejando Huella… Una Historia Musical," and is being produced by Viva Entertainment Network in conjunction with the Chicago-based Cárdenas Marketing Network and Agave Promotions.
While Billboard initially reported Yuridia would be the opening act, it will now be Durcal who will open most of the shows while Silvestre Dangond will open the second show of the tour in New York on June 24 at the IZOD Center.
Don't miss the Billboard Latin Music Conference & Awards, presented by State Farm taking place next week, April 23-26, 2012 at the JW Marriott Marquis, Miami. This year's conference includes Q&As with Pitbull and Jenni Rivera, the 2nd annual Latin Music Marketing Awards, and execs like Target VP of entertainment John Butcher and Univision radio president Jose Valle. Visit BillboardLatinConference.com for details.
The tour will include Latin equestrian shows that have traditionally been part of Aguilar and Sebastian's sets in addition to "jaripeo" performances that are considered a form of bull riding practiced in Mexico. The modern form in "charreada" are called "jineteo de toro," which requires the rider to stay on the bull as long as possible.
Tickets go on sale today at ticketmaster.com and each venue's box office.
Here are the North American Dejando Huella tour dates:
June 22: Washington, D.C. (Patriot Center, no opening act)
June 24: New York (IZOD Center)
June 29: Las Vegas (Orleans Arena)
June 30: Stockton, Calif. (Stockton Arena)
July 1: Salinas, Calif. (Salinas Sports Complex)
July 13: San Antonio (Freeman Coliseum)
July 14: Houston (Toyota Center)
July 15: Dallas (American Airlines Center)
Sept. 22: Kansas City (Sprint Center)
Sept. 23: Chicago (Allstate Arena)
Sept. 28: El Paso, Texas (El Paso Coliseum)
Sept. 29: Laredo, Texas (Laredo Energy Arena)
Sept. 30: Hidalgo, Texas (State Farm Arena)
Broadcasting to the Latino Community in Kansas City and Worldwide
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Mexico pres front-runner promises to cut violence - KansasCity.com
Mexico pres front-runner promises to cut violence - KansasCity.com
MEXICO CITY -- Shortly after sunrise last month in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, police found 14 butchered bodies in a van outside city hall, a salvo in a seesawing battle of horrors between Mexico's two most powerful drug cartels.
Soon after, nine people were hanged from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo. Fourteen heads were left in coolers outside city hall. Eighteen mutilated bodies were dumped by a scenic lake in western Mexico. The decapitated bodies of 49 people were dumped outside a small town 75 miles from the U.S. border.
The man who appears likely to become Mexico's next president says he can ease the waves of violence consuming the country by changing the focus of its six-year offensive against organized crime.
Mexico's current administration has targeted the top ranks of the country's drug cartels, deploying thousands of troops to capture crime kingpins and seize their drugs and weapons, often in close coordination with the U.S. It is not uncommon for President Felipe Calderon's administration to boast of its success in arresting many of the country's most-wanted men.
Enrique Pena Nieto, who has a double-digit lead five weeks before the July 1 election, says his top security priority will not be arresting the leaders of the organizations that move hundreds of millions of dollars of narcotics each year into the United States. Instead, he and his advisers say, they will focus the government's resources on reducing homicide, kidnapping and extortion - the crimes that do the most damage to the greatest number of Mexicans - by flooding police and troops into towns and cities with the highest rates of violent crime.
"This doesn't mean that we don't pay attention to other crimes, or that we don't fight drug trafficking, but the central theme at this time is diminishing violence in the country," Pena Nieto told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
Pena Nieto's campaign said drug cartels could still be attacked, particularly if they carry out murders, kidnappings and extortion, but arresting their leaders will no longer be the focus of government efforts.
"Each administration chooses its operational objectives, and the objective per se is not the extradition or capture of big bosses, or the burning of seized drugs," Pena Nieto's campaign coordinator, Luis Videgaray, told the AP.
Some observers say that a strategy to reduce violence above all else could mean that drug dealers who conduct their businesses discreetly will be quietly left alone.
"I think that it's very clear that he's moving in the direction of concentrating the resources that the federal state has (toward) fighting crime and violence that affect people in Mexico ... as opposed to concentrating the resources on combating drug trafficking," said Former Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda. ""If you have scarce resources and you're focusing them on A, you're not focusing them on B."
Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its Spanish initials as the PRI, ruled Mexico for 70 years until it lost the presidency in 2000, and high-ranking party figures and their relatives were often accused of striking deals with cartels in exchange for political protection. Violence was far lower, in large part because cartels maintained uncontested control of smuggling routes in many parts of the country.
Opponents have been quick to say that Pena Nieto will go back to the old PRI model of cutting a deal with cartels.
"They've shown themselves to be absolutely tolerant of organized crime," said Josefina Vazquez Mota told Spanish newspaper El Pais in a recent interview. Vazquez Mota is running on the presidential ticket for the National Action Party.
With Mexicans expressing strong support in polls for a militarized confrontation with crime, Pena Nieto is promising continuity in key aspects of Mexico's U.S.-backed drug war.
He has rejected legalization, called for more cooperation with Washington and praised Calderon's decision to confront the cartels shortly after taking office. On the campaign trail, Pena Nieto has been emphasizing his plans to maintain or increase the military presence in violence-torn cities like Monterrey and Veracruz. He has pledged an increase in the number of federal police officers from 36,000 to 50,000, and is also proposing a new semi-military police force composed of former soldiers and marines under civilian command that would be deployed to the towns and cities suffering from the highest violence and weakest policing.
But those pledges imply a subtle but potentially important change.
Pena Nieto's new approach "would not stop fighting the drug cartels but it would shift from targeting the heads of the cartels," campaign spokesman Diego Gomez said. "What Calderon has been doing is just targeting a few main cartels and splitting them up and what you have is chaos."
All three major Mexican presidential candidates have been criticized for vagueness of their proposals on conducting the war against crime, and many observers have remarked upon the absence of debate about the direction of the country's security policy.
Vazquez Mota has been vocally supportive of her party's current policy, pledging to expand the federal police to 150,000, a roughly four-fold increase over current numbers. Fellow backers of the current U.S. Mexican strategy argue that the attack on cartels is showing results, with crime groups weakened by Calderon's six-year offensive, and preliminary and unofficial statistics showing signs of violent crimes beginning to wane in some parts of the country.
Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has placed more emphasis on withdrawing back the military from the streets, fighting corruption among government officials and reducing crime by reducing social inequality.
A change in approach would align Pena Nieto with a new strain of thinking in public-policy circles in Mexico and the United States that calls for making violence the overwhelming focus of law-enforcement activity in the drug war, deemphasizing narcotics trafficking and other crimes.
"I and other people have been advocating for a strategy that focuses on reduction in violence," said Eric Olson, who oversees studies of U.S.-Mexico security cooperation and research on organized crime and drug trafficking at the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
Olson acknowledged that the focus on violence could mean relenting in operations against cartels that use less violence than their rivals, but he called that a necessary and temporary letup in order to get a handle on Mexico's biggest problem, the violence that is terrorizing the population and undermining the legitimacy of the state.
first.""Crime will always exist. The question is can you make it less harmful and get it out of people's lives as much as possible," he said. "It's not a de facto negotiation with them. It's a question of what comes
MEXICO CITY -- Shortly after sunrise last month in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, police found 14 butchered bodies in a van outside city hall, a salvo in a seesawing battle of horrors between Mexico's two most powerful drug cartels.
Soon after, nine people were hanged from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo. Fourteen heads were left in coolers outside city hall. Eighteen mutilated bodies were dumped by a scenic lake in western Mexico. The decapitated bodies of 49 people were dumped outside a small town 75 miles from the U.S. border.
The man who appears likely to become Mexico's next president says he can ease the waves of violence consuming the country by changing the focus of its six-year offensive against organized crime.
Mexico's current administration has targeted the top ranks of the country's drug cartels, deploying thousands of troops to capture crime kingpins and seize their drugs and weapons, often in close coordination with the U.S. It is not uncommon for President Felipe Calderon's administration to boast of its success in arresting many of the country's most-wanted men.
Enrique Pena Nieto, who has a double-digit lead five weeks before the July 1 election, says his top security priority will not be arresting the leaders of the organizations that move hundreds of millions of dollars of narcotics each year into the United States. Instead, he and his advisers say, they will focus the government's resources on reducing homicide, kidnapping and extortion - the crimes that do the most damage to the greatest number of Mexicans - by flooding police and troops into towns and cities with the highest rates of violent crime.
"This doesn't mean that we don't pay attention to other crimes, or that we don't fight drug trafficking, but the central theme at this time is diminishing violence in the country," Pena Nieto told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
Pena Nieto's campaign said drug cartels could still be attacked, particularly if they carry out murders, kidnappings and extortion, but arresting their leaders will no longer be the focus of government efforts.
"Each administration chooses its operational objectives, and the objective per se is not the extradition or capture of big bosses, or the burning of seized drugs," Pena Nieto's campaign coordinator, Luis Videgaray, told the AP.
Some observers say that a strategy to reduce violence above all else could mean that drug dealers who conduct their businesses discreetly will be quietly left alone.
"I think that it's very clear that he's moving in the direction of concentrating the resources that the federal state has (toward) fighting crime and violence that affect people in Mexico ... as opposed to concentrating the resources on combating drug trafficking," said Former Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda. ""If you have scarce resources and you're focusing them on A, you're not focusing them on B."
Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its Spanish initials as the PRI, ruled Mexico for 70 years until it lost the presidency in 2000, and high-ranking party figures and their relatives were often accused of striking deals with cartels in exchange for political protection. Violence was far lower, in large part because cartels maintained uncontested control of smuggling routes in many parts of the country.
Opponents have been quick to say that Pena Nieto will go back to the old PRI model of cutting a deal with cartels.
"They've shown themselves to be absolutely tolerant of organized crime," said Josefina Vazquez Mota told Spanish newspaper El Pais in a recent interview. Vazquez Mota is running on the presidential ticket for the National Action Party.
With Mexicans expressing strong support in polls for a militarized confrontation with crime, Pena Nieto is promising continuity in key aspects of Mexico's U.S.-backed drug war.
He has rejected legalization, called for more cooperation with Washington and praised Calderon's decision to confront the cartels shortly after taking office. On the campaign trail, Pena Nieto has been emphasizing his plans to maintain or increase the military presence in violence-torn cities like Monterrey and Veracruz. He has pledged an increase in the number of federal police officers from 36,000 to 50,000, and is also proposing a new semi-military police force composed of former soldiers and marines under civilian command that would be deployed to the towns and cities suffering from the highest violence and weakest policing.
But those pledges imply a subtle but potentially important change.
Pena Nieto's new approach "would not stop fighting the drug cartels but it would shift from targeting the heads of the cartels," campaign spokesman Diego Gomez said. "What Calderon has been doing is just targeting a few main cartels and splitting them up and what you have is chaos."
All three major Mexican presidential candidates have been criticized for vagueness of their proposals on conducting the war against crime, and many observers have remarked upon the absence of debate about the direction of the country's security policy.
Vazquez Mota has been vocally supportive of her party's current policy, pledging to expand the federal police to 150,000, a roughly four-fold increase over current numbers. Fellow backers of the current U.S. Mexican strategy argue that the attack on cartels is showing results, with crime groups weakened by Calderon's six-year offensive, and preliminary and unofficial statistics showing signs of violent crimes beginning to wane in some parts of the country.
Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has placed more emphasis on withdrawing back the military from the streets, fighting corruption among government officials and reducing crime by reducing social inequality.
A change in approach would align Pena Nieto with a new strain of thinking in public-policy circles in Mexico and the United States that calls for making violence the overwhelming focus of law-enforcement activity in the drug war, deemphasizing narcotics trafficking and other crimes.
"I and other people have been advocating for a strategy that focuses on reduction in violence," said Eric Olson, who oversees studies of U.S.-Mexico security cooperation and research on organized crime and drug trafficking at the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
Olson acknowledged that the focus on violence could mean relenting in operations against cartels that use less violence than their rivals, but he called that a necessary and temporary letup in order to get a handle on Mexico's biggest problem, the violence that is terrorizing the population and undermining the legitimacy of the state.
first.""Crime will always exist. The question is can you make it less harmful and get it out of people's lives as much as possible," he said. "It's not a de facto negotiation with them. It's a question of what comes
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Obama, Romney campaigns target young Hispanics with cellphones - KansasCity.com
Obama, Romney campaigns target young Hispanics with cellphones - KansasCity.com
Young voters and Hispanic voters are far more likely to use their phones to go online than older generations are, so campaigns that use mobile technology are most likely to reach young Hispanics, according to Peter Levine, the director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
That’s because a mobile phone and an app are personalized and engaging – a far cry from a robocall or a TV ad. Young voters are deeply skeptical of one-for-all marketing and respond best to one-on-one, Hispanic-to-Hispanic marketing, according to research by Levine’s group.
It’s “particularly effective in overcoming issues of trust and motivation that would otherwise be in the way of voting,” Levine said.
Alex Velasco, a 26-year-old first-generation Mexican-American, said Levine’s assessments were right on.
“It’s really easy to reach me on my phone because I have it with me all the time – when I’m on the train, when I’m walking,” Velasco said. “If you send me something political (on my phone), I would be way more likely to read it because it is so easy.”
According to Levine, promoting civic engagement via mobile phones is a technique that’s especially well-suited to the Hispanic community. Hispanic voters have a greater barrier to enter the political system, he said. Many don’t have proper identification or have never voted, so a mobile app gives a much-needed push to the polls. Other experts say mobile phones fit the lifestyles of Hispanic voters more than they do those of the general population.
Democratic President Barack Obama’s campaign is ahead of Republican Mitt Romney’s in using the mobile platform. While both have mobile-optimized websites, the president also has launched the Latinos for Obama website optimized for mobile devices.
“The promise and power of digital is to reach people in the places where they already are, and get them using social tools to spread the word about the president to their own networks,” said Gabriela Domenzain, the Obama campaign’s director of Hispanic media.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/05/22/3624461/obama-romney-campaigns-target.html#storylink=cpy
Young voters and Hispanic voters are far more likely to use their phones to go online than older generations are, so campaigns that use mobile technology are most likely to reach young Hispanics, according to Peter Levine, the director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
That’s because a mobile phone and an app are personalized and engaging – a far cry from a robocall or a TV ad. Young voters are deeply skeptical of one-for-all marketing and respond best to one-on-one, Hispanic-to-Hispanic marketing, according to research by Levine’s group.
It’s “particularly effective in overcoming issues of trust and motivation that would otherwise be in the way of voting,” Levine said.
Alex Velasco, a 26-year-old first-generation Mexican-American, said Levine’s assessments were right on.
“It’s really easy to reach me on my phone because I have it with me all the time – when I’m on the train, when I’m walking,” Velasco said. “If you send me something political (on my phone), I would be way more likely to read it because it is so easy.”
According to Levine, promoting civic engagement via mobile phones is a technique that’s especially well-suited to the Hispanic community. Hispanic voters have a greater barrier to enter the political system, he said. Many don’t have proper identification or have never voted, so a mobile app gives a much-needed push to the polls. Other experts say mobile phones fit the lifestyles of Hispanic voters more than they do those of the general population.
Democratic President Barack Obama’s campaign is ahead of Republican Mitt Romney’s in using the mobile platform. While both have mobile-optimized websites, the president also has launched the Latinos for Obama website optimized for mobile devices.
“The promise and power of digital is to reach people in the places where they already are, and get them using social tools to spread the word about the president to their own networks,” said Gabriela Domenzain, the Obama campaign’s director of Hispanic media.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/05/22/3624461/obama-romney-campaigns-target.html#storylink=cpy
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Free Latin House Mix to Download
Download this mix absolutely free (as long as you tell someone else to download it) . A live Latin Pop house Mix by Radio Latino's own Cache 22Pass it along!
DOWNLOAD LINK
Follow us for more free downloads
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Las Voces de Mexico Episode 2
A Medley of classic and new Mexican artists representing 60 years of rich Mexican tradition of Ranchera music. Listen to it at Las Voces de Mexico Episode 2Un popurrí de música ranchera por artistas clásicos y modernos representando más de 60 años de tradición mejicana. Las Voces de Mexico
Friday, May 18, 2012
What You’re Listening To | Enrique Chi, lead guitarist and vocalist for Making Movies - KansasCity.com
What You’re Listening To | Enrique Chi, lead guitarist and vocalist for Making Movies - KansasCity.com
Enrique Chi, the lead guitarist and vocalist for the Kansas City-based Making Movies, has long strived to integrate a Latin twist into his band’s music. The inspiration for the group’s name might have come from the English rock band Dire Straits’ album, but there’s no denying the Latin feel. Chi, who was born in Panama, recently sat down to detail his favorite 10 songs of the moment.
Enrique Chi, the lead guitarist and vocalist for the Kansas City-based Making Movies, has long strived to integrate a Latin twist into his band’s music. The inspiration for the group’s name might have come from the English rock band Dire Straits’ album, but there’s no denying the Latin feel. Chi, who was born in Panama, recently sat down to detail his favorite 10 songs of the moment.
The Gipsy Kings-Bamboleo Live from Kansas City
A live performance by the Gipsy Kings at the Midland Theater recorded and brought to you by radiolatinokc.org
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Appreciating Mexican author Carlos Fuentes - KansasCity.com
Whatever they may have thought of his politics, anyone lucky enough to have conversed with author Carlos Fuentes couldn't help but be taken by his patrician good looks and his love affair with language.
Appreciating Mexican author Carlos Fuentes - KansasCity.com
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Seasonal farm-worker visa program frustrates growers - KansasCity.com
"The problem with the program is that as long as we have an H-2A employee we basically have an opening on the farm for a U.S. worker," Ferguson said. "I have to advertise across the nation for U.S. workers. And sometimes we'll get some people who will come, they want to come out, they want to go to work. But they don't actually want to work."
Seasonal farm-worker visa program frustrates growers - KansasCity.com
Seasonal farm-worker visa program frustrates growers - KansasCity.com
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Las Voces de Mexico Episode 1
Un popurrí de música ranchera por artistas clásicos y modernos representando más de 60 años de tradición mejicana. Las Voces de Mexico
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Friday, May 4, 2012
PBS plans documentary series on Latino Americans - KansasCity.com
NEW YORK -- PBS said Wednesday it is preparing a six-hour documentary series on the history of Latinos in the United States, set to air in the fall of 2013.
English and Spanish-language versions are being produced for the project, which will air across three days. The supervising producer is Adriana Bosch, a Cuban-American who recently did a documentary for PBS on Latin music.
Bosch said she began meeting with officials at WETA, the PBS station in Washington, in 2008 about the project. They spent nearly three years putting funding together before starting with the filming.
It was in 2007 that Hispanic organizations criticized PBS and filmmaker Ken Burns for inadequately representing the contributions of Latinos in his 15-hour documentary on World War II.
"I thought this was a story whose time had come, had come a long time ago. I was surprised that it hadn't been done," said Bosch, who recalled similar series on the experiences of African-Americans, Jews and the Irish in the U.S.
A large part of the documentary will focus on the experiences of Mexican-Americans, but it will also include stories about Latinos from other countries who made contributions to the U.S., she said.
"Latinos have been part of American history since before there were 13 colonies," she said.
The sprawling project includes an advisory panel of academics from across the country and 15 other producers and assistants.
Bosch said she hoped both non-Latinos and Latinos seeking to learn about their heritage will tune in. The project will have a companion book, a bilingual website and a school curriculum tied to its findings. "We don't want this to end with the broadcast," she said.
English and Spanish-language versions are being produced for the project, which will air across three days. The supervising producer is Adriana Bosch, a Cuban-American who recently did a documentary for PBS on Latin music.
Bosch said she began meeting with officials at WETA, the PBS station in Washington, in 2008 about the project. They spent nearly three years putting funding together before starting with the filming.
It was in 2007 that Hispanic organizations criticized PBS and filmmaker Ken Burns for inadequately representing the contributions of Latinos in his 15-hour documentary on World War II.
"I thought this was a story whose time had come, had come a long time ago. I was surprised that it hadn't been done," said Bosch, who recalled similar series on the experiences of African-Americans, Jews and the Irish in the U.S.
A large part of the documentary will focus on the experiences of Mexican-Americans, but it will also include stories about Latinos from other countries who made contributions to the U.S., she said.
"Latinos have been part of American history since before there were 13 colonies," she said.
The sprawling project includes an advisory panel of academics from across the country and 15 other producers and assistants.
Bosch said she hoped both non-Latinos and Latinos seeking to learn about their heritage will tune in. The project will have a companion book, a bilingual website and a school curriculum tied to its findings. "We don't want this to end with the broadcast," she said.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Attendance records, not curfew, seen as anti-truancy tactic - KansasCity.com
Forget the daytime curfew.
Kansas City law officers and educators have agreed on another approach to bring the weight of the law on chronic truants and their parents.
An amended ordinance expected to go before the City Council next week makes a hammer out of school attendance records, instead of compelling police to find a child in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Authorities wouldn’t need to catch children out of class. Schools would be able to deliver attendance records to the city prosecutor’s office. Police would issue tickets and parents would be summoned to municipal court.
“We wanted to get away from going around and scooping up kids who may or may not belong in school,” City Prosecutor Lowell Gard said.
Everyone seems happy with the revised ordinance, which, when it was a day curfew proposal, had raised a storm of concerns over civil liberties, constitutional issues and the innocent movements of home-schooled children.
City Councilman Scott Wagner has worked for months trying to forge a deal on behalf of school districts — particularly Kansas City and Hickman Mills — that want effective legal authority to pressure parents whose children persistently miss school.
“After all this effort, I think we’ve got something that will work for everyone and still provide the teeth police and schools have asked for,” Wagner said. “…We can send a message to parents that we expect kids to be in school.”
Truancy concerns have mounted, particularly at Central, East and Northeast high schools in Kansas City where the district is looking at many ways to reverse alarming attendance rates of 75 to 80 percent.
A police sweep in the district’s Northeast neighborhood last fall rounded up 52 truant students.
Under the new proposal, the court could issue fines up to $500, but city officials said parents probably would initially get warnings to get their children in school. There would also be opportunities in many cases to attend parenting classes or counseling before receiving a fine.
Schools aren’t just relying on the ordinance, either. The Kansas City Public Schools is seeking grant funding to restore its truancy officer positions and is developing plans to open an alternative school this fall. It has marshaled volunteers to help run phone banks calling on families and making home visits where absences have become a concern.
In the past, the school district has occasionally teamed up with police to run truancy sweeps, rounding up students into a school building and then making a parent come to get them. But parents left with no citations or warnings. The next day, many students would simply skip school again.
The problem, Kansas City Superintendent Steve Green said, is that the district had no salient threat it could use when talking to parents and students caught in a sweep.
Kansas City law officers and educators have agreed on another approach to bring the weight of the law on chronic truants and their parents.
An amended ordinance expected to go before the City Council next week makes a hammer out of school attendance records, instead of compelling police to find a child in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Authorities wouldn’t need to catch children out of class. Schools would be able to deliver attendance records to the city prosecutor’s office. Police would issue tickets and parents would be summoned to municipal court.
“We wanted to get away from going around and scooping up kids who may or may not belong in school,” City Prosecutor Lowell Gard said.
Everyone seems happy with the revised ordinance, which, when it was a day curfew proposal, had raised a storm of concerns over civil liberties, constitutional issues and the innocent movements of home-schooled children.
City Councilman Scott Wagner has worked for months trying to forge a deal on behalf of school districts — particularly Kansas City and Hickman Mills — that want effective legal authority to pressure parents whose children persistently miss school.
“After all this effort, I think we’ve got something that will work for everyone and still provide the teeth police and schools have asked for,” Wagner said. “…We can send a message to parents that we expect kids to be in school.”
Truancy concerns have mounted, particularly at Central, East and Northeast high schools in Kansas City where the district is looking at many ways to reverse alarming attendance rates of 75 to 80 percent.
A police sweep in the district’s Northeast neighborhood last fall rounded up 52 truant students.
Under the new proposal, the court could issue fines up to $500, but city officials said parents probably would initially get warnings to get their children in school. There would also be opportunities in many cases to attend parenting classes or counseling before receiving a fine.
Schools aren’t just relying on the ordinance, either. The Kansas City Public Schools is seeking grant funding to restore its truancy officer positions and is developing plans to open an alternative school this fall. It has marshaled volunteers to help run phone banks calling on families and making home visits where absences have become a concern.
In the past, the school district has occasionally teamed up with police to run truancy sweeps, rounding up students into a school building and then making a parent come to get them. But parents left with no citations or warnings. The next day, many students would simply skip school again.
The problem, Kansas City Superintendent Steve Green said, is that the district had no salient threat it could use when talking to parents and students caught in a sweep.
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