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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