For those of you dealing with truancy and tardiness b/c CP........

[Kitty C.]

Here's one school district's response and request to it:

Iowa City officials want tougher truancy laws

 By Zack Kucharski
The Gazette
Thursday, June 10, 2004, 11:24:28 PM

IOWA CITY -- School district officials plan to meet with local lawmakers this summer to ask for stiffer truancy laws to help keep students in classrooms.
Concerns come as Iowa City school district officials see an increase in truancy and say they have few forms of legal recourse to level at students intentionally missing school. Not only are the number of truancy cases increasing, but those who are truant are missing more days, district officials say.

"We really feel the teeth in the Iowa law just aren't there," said Joan Vandenberg, the Iowa City school district's at-risk coordinator. "The options under the law are pretty limited."

The main option -- threatening to send parents to jail -- isn't a feasible step in many truancy cases, said Jim Behle, associate superintendent. Often, parents want their children to return to school, he said.

"It doesn't make sense to remove someone from the home in these types of cases," said Behle, who added that students recognize this and can hold out from attending school, leaving the district with few paths of recourse.

Another problem is that a truancy case is pursued in the juvenile court system only if it is part of another offense, officials said.

The state allows each district to determine the number of days a student can miss before being considered truant. The Iowa City district hasn't set the number of absences to define a student as truant, but often uses 30 missed days.

District officials aren't sure the extent of changes they'll seek. The district is modifying attendance policies and looking at internal programs which could help retain students. Part of the review includes looking at truancy policies in other states.

The district wants to see changes to improve student achievement and to stem increases in the number of students identified as at-risk of graduating. Also of concern are attendance requirements in federal No Child Left Behind legislation.

There's no standard age at which truancy occurs and no standard reason why students opt to skip school. Reasons for truancy range from substance abuse to students staying home to care for other siblings.

"Attendance issues are really just the tip of the iceberg for a lot of these kids," Vandenberg said. "But we can't do much teaching with a student who tends to have that many absences."

To help reduce problems, the district has an attendance task force that matches the truant student with district staff, juvenile court authorities and the Johnson County Attorney's Office. The task force mediates an attendance plan for the student.

The district also wants to be able to intervene earlier for the students, many of whom have other social service needs. The district has monitored students with 30 or more days of school absences, but will begin monitoring student absences much more closely under a new attendance policy expected this summer.

Jerry Arganbright, principal at West High School in Iowa City, said that fewer than 12 of the school's nearly 1,700 students could be considered truant. He believes that it takes a multi-faceted approach, not just laws, to get students to stay in classrooms.

"There needs to be some way of invoking care and emotion," he said.

Despite an apparent increase in truancy, only a very small percentage of the district's 10,943 students have truancy problems, district officials said.

The Iowa Department of Education and Iowa Association of School Boards has not advocated for any changes in the state truancy laws.

"If there are concerns whether the current law is effective enough, it's a conversation that should be had," said Kathi Slaughter, spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Education.

"The goal is to keep kids in school until they graduate," she said. "Schools need to have multiple ways to do that."

Contact the writer: (319) 339-3157 or [email protected]