HANCOCK COUNTY — After sitting down with the student, asking him why he’d missed so many days of school and was truant, juvenile probation officers had a revelation. The student broke down. He told them he hated coming to school not because he wasn’t interested or wasn’t otherwise engaged in learning. It was because he was being bullied during a passing period.
Once county officials learned the reason the student was truant, it was an easy fix, they said. Administrators immediately stationed a teacher in the hallway to stop the harassment. Since that time, juvenile probation has never had another issue with the student.
This is one of the success stories in a collaboration between the schools and the courts that enforce school attendance laws while identifying the underlying problems that cause kids to miss school in the first place. While many counties across the state struggle with truancy and “educational neglect” — the legal term used in some of these cases — Hancock County officials and school district administrators think they have figured it out.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
“Part of keeping kids in school is figuring out what their issues are,” said Joshua Sipes, chief probation officer for Hancock County.
A student is considered truant when he or she misses an abnormal amount of days: 10 to 18 without an official excuse. Depending on the age of the student, teenagers who miss too much school can be charged with a juvenile offense. It’s not considered a crime, but it is a violation of the law.
A parent, however, can be charged with educational neglect, typically a Level 6 felony crime if they allow their child to miss too much school without just cause, officials said.
Those cases actually are fairly rare. The prosecutors office filed four educational neglect cases in 2016-17 and three in 2017-18, Hancock County Prosecutor Brent Eaton said in an email to the Daily Reporter.
About four years ago, officials in the county probation department, along with officials from the county courts and local school districts, made a commitment to work together to curb truancy.
The county’s juvenile probation department acts as a go-between for the prosecutor’s office, which files charges, and the families.
Sipes, who worked with juvenile probation for 18 years before turning the job over to Lauren Schaler, said Hancock Circuit Judge Richard Culver asked him to create a program in which courts and schools could work together to combat the problem.
They came up with a group called the “Positive Attendance Team,” which sent out letters, signed by the judge, to families identified as having too many absences.
“Those letters got people’s attention,” Sipes said.
They’ve since tweaked the process to include the wording “unexcused absences,” and it has helped.
“Our department, the prosecutors office and all four school districts all have an understanding of what the process is,” Schaler said.
Keeping track of educational neglect
Strategies to keep kids in class can include monitoring, prevention, intervention, and a final step of truancy or legal intervention, according to the Indiana Department of Education.
When there’s an attendance issue, school officials send parents series of attendance letters. If the the problem persists, they’ll have a face-to-face meeting at school, sometimes with a juvenile probation officer in attendance. If the meeting doesn’t resolve the attendance issue, probation officials will then send the neglect problem to the prosecutor’s office to be dealt with.
Having procedures in place to use to combat attendance issues has helped curb the problem, school officials say.
Greenfield-Central Superintendent Harold Olin said 40 families received a third attendance letter from the school during the 2017-18 school year.
Most of the students were placed on an attendance “contract,” Olin said. Out of the 40 cases, six were referred to the prosecutor. The district has a total enrollment of just under 4,500 students, according to DOE data.
Schools’ policies are similar
Southern Hancock schools officials identified 85 students as truant in 2017-18, spokesman Wes Anderson said. Twenty-three students out of an enrollment of about 3,800 face attendance issues.
Like other districts, officials make their stance clear in the student handbook, which says when a student has six absences in any class, parents will be notified by mail and the student might be required to submit a medical note explaining the absences. Failure to submit a medical note could result in a referral to the county probation department or the child welfare agencies.
After 12 unexcused absences, SH officials will hold a conference with the student, parent and an administrator to develop an attendance contract. After 15 unexcused absences, they’ll contact the probation department. When it hits 16, it is referred to the prosecutor.
“What can we do to get each kid to school every day?” said Anderson before answering the question. “Circumstances are never the same — so we try to work with families to get students in their seats when the bell rings.”
Sipes and Schaler said that is the key: helping families figure out what the issues are, then fixing them to get the child in class.
“Education is the number one influence on keeping people out of the (criminal justice) system,” Sipes said.
While district officials work to provide students options to get their diploma via alternative classes, home school and e-learning, county officials say students who miss big too many days rarely muster the determination to use those options.
Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation officials also follow standard county attendance policy and list protocols in the attendance section of school handbooks.
School staff contact and consult with parents at least four times — three letters plus a meeting — before reporting to absences to county officials, Maria Bond, director of community relations, said.
Mt. Vernon officials have also created an attendance council to help monitor all excused and unexcused absences. The council is made up of four staff members who are assigned to each grade level.
This has enabled Mt. Vernon, with an enrollment of about 4,200, to take a proactive stance by identifying any potential family and attendance concerns, Bond said. Fourteen students are on attendance contracts, but officials have had to turn a handful over to county officials.
Eastern Hancock, with an enrollment of about 1,200, keeps track of attendance and discipline documentation on a student management system called Skyward.
Eastern Hancock recorded five truancy infractions in the high school last year, none in the middle school, and zero infractions in 2016-17 said Lisa Truitt, Eastern Hancock assistant principal.
Once a student reaches 10 or more unexcused absences, their attendance may be reported to the state Department of Child Services as well as juvenile probation.
If the problem continues, administrators can file a report with a school resource officer, Truitt said. The resource officer can then send the report to juvenile probation.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”At a glance” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Indiana Educational attendance laws
Habitual truancy includes students absent 10 days or more from school within a school year without being excused or without being absent under a parental request filed with the school.
Excused Absences
Excused absences are defined as absences the school corporation regards as legitimate reasons for being out of school, as included in the school policy, and could include:
Illness verified by note from a parent/guardian
Illness verified by note from a physician
Family funeral
Maternity
Military-Connected Families (e.g. absences related to deployment and return)
Unexcused Absences
An unexcused absence is any absence not covered under the definition of excused or exempt.
Source: Indiana Department of Education
[sc:pullout-text-end]
