A comprehensive Approach to Improving Student Attendance in Los Angeles County a report from the School Attendance Task Force

Los Angeles School Police Department

Appendix CCouncilmember Cárdenas Motion

Appendix DLos Angeles Unified School District Programs

Three-Tiered Attendance Intervention Model

Discipline Foundation Policy School-Wide Positive Behavior Support Program

http://notebook.lausd.net/portal/page?_pageid=33,911578&_dad=ptl&_schema=PTL_EP

Appendix ETask Force Meeting Schedule and Proceedings

September 20, 2010

There was a general discussion of current local efforts to prevent/reduce truancy and what seems to be working and what’s not.

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  It was agreed that truancy is “the tip of the iceberg” that results from other problems and, there­fore, a comprehensive approach is needed to properly address it. Also, differ­ent approaches are needed for different communities, for different causes of tru­ancy, and for differ­ent age groups (elementary, middle and high schools).
  
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  School engagement is key and there are some promising practices in place in some communi­ties: LAUSD’s Washington Prep, the Pomona Project, school personnel mentor­ing youth, fam­ily support units, training parents as volunteer parent advocates that understand how to navi­gate the school system, teen courts.
  
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  Civilian responses are also important—for example, community task forces, interns working on the streets of Philadelphia, safe passage programs, businesses opening their doors later in the morning (after school starts).
  
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  Schools must tap into and collaborate with community resources, especially in deal­ing with special populations such as foster and probation youth.
  
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  All of us must communicate with each other more effectively.
  
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  While the task force is coming up with strategies for reducing truancy in the near future, we need to pay attention to what’s not working now, as these approaches are com­pounding the prob­lem. Resources must be shifted and there must be increased account­ability for interven­tions used.
  
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  What’s not working well now: criminalizing truancy with citations, fines, etc., which results in youth missing even more school, parents missing work, and puts a financial bur­den on fami­lies which leads to more trouble (e.g., driver’s license suspensions) for not paying fines. Fur­ther, some neighborhoods (e.g., South LA, Boyle Heights, East SFV) are being targeted dispro­portionately with high numbers of citations. In some cases, youth are even being cited when walking TO school. Current approaches are gener­ally “blunt instruments” that don’t differ­entiate well among different groups of tru­ants and, therefore, don’t link truant youth to the right services.
  

December 1, 2010

This meeting focused on law enforcement approaches to dealing with truancy and presenta­tions were made by:

Earl Paysinger, Assistant Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department

Tim Anderson, Interim Chief of the Los Angeles School Police Department

Lydia Bodin, Deputy in Charge for the Los Angeles County District Attorney

Kristen Byrdsong, Attorney-in-Charge for the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office

Paysinger observed that “truancy is not a crime”; however, teens commit 25% of the 86,000 prop­erty crimes committed annually and approximately 36% of these are commit­ted during school hours. He doesn’t believe that citations, fines, or jail prevent truancy, as tru­ancy is caused, in large part, by social and economic conditions and such factors as family structure. As “it is not a law enforcement problem,” LAPD is partnering with Pub­lic Counsel and others to find alterna­tives that decriminalize truancy.

Some promising ideas for the Task Force to consider include:

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  Media marketing campaigns that deliver positive messages about staying in school. Ideally, these should include using social networking sites and their messag­ing capability to remind youth about attending school.
  
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  Incentivizing school attendance through, for example, students being able to earn prizes such as Apple nanos or have special ringtones/wallpaper on their cell phones
  
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  Providing incentives within schools
  
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  Taking truant students to school-based or community resource centers or other diversion­ary programs
  

Anderson noted that, at the present time, there is a “limited tool belt” to deal with truancy and “the easy answer isn’t always the right answer.” Just taking students back to school isn’t working and more diversionary centers and programs are needed.

Bodin described the District Attorney’s successful Abolish Chronic Truancy program, which is reducing truancy by more than 50%, and the importance of focusing on young students, particu­larly those in elementary school. Byrdsong, whose office works primar­ily with middle school students, pointed out that what seems to be working is requiring parents to accompany their kids to school, because of the positive connections that are formed between parents and school person­nel.

Councilman Cardenas emphasized that Chiefs Paysinger and Anderson observations that cita­tions, fines and jail are not effectively reducing truancy are very important and need to be clearly communicated to school board, city and county policymakers.