Report cites out of control truancy
While the Tulare County civil
grand jury claims area schools are losing millions of dollars a year due to
student truancy, Porterville Unified School Superintendent Dr. John Snavely
says that is not accurate.
In a report released Wednesday,
the jury states “absences from school resulted in the loss of $21 million in
the form of Average Daily Attendance payments to Tulare County Schools in the
2012-13 school year.
The report included a breakdown
of absences for each school district in the county and stated Porterville
Unified had a truancy rate of 33.6 percent, or 4,981 out of 14,825 students.
Based on amount used by the jury, that would mean PUSD lost more than a million
dollars in funding, a figure Snavely said is not correct.
“I’m not certain those numbers
are accurate,” said the local superintendent, adding the district has taken an
“aggressive” approach to combating truancy and “We’ve generally been really
proud of our attendance rates.”
Snavely said the district has
been in the 90 percentile range for attendance for the high schools and in the
95-98 percentile range in the elementary schools. He said he did not know how
the county came up with the 67 percentile rate.
John Hobbs, a member of the
grand jury, said he was not certain, but the figures either came from the
Tulare County Department of Education or from the state Department of
Education.
Hobbs said the message is for
schools to bring those rates down to capture the funding that they claim is
lost.
The truancy rates were higher
for districts that include high schools, and much lower for elementary school
districts. Springville was reported with a 55.6 percent truancy rate, while
Strathmore Union’s rate was just 3.1 percent. Visalia Unified had a Rate of 46
percent and Lindsay Unified had a rate of 17.2 percent. Tulare Union High
School district’s rate was the highest in the county at 62.4 percent.
Snavely said the discrepancy
could be how schools report absences.
He said PUSD is required to
send a letter to a parent if a student has three unexcused absences and on a
few occasions, have taken parents to court for not sending their children to
school as required by law.
“We are not losing a million
dollars,” stressed Snavely.
Snavely agreed with the jury
that a student not being in class is more than a funding issue, it means the
child is not receiving their education.
The jury define truant as any
student missing more than 30 minutes of instruction without an excuse three
times during the school year, but Snavely said even if a student shows up late
to school, the district gets a portion of that average daily attendance
funding. Much of school funding is based on per student per day in class.
The jury was also critical of
the county district attorney’s office for not taken more of a lead in combating
truancy. One statement was, “Office of the District Attorney does not currently
practice any outreach programs to educate students and parents on School
Attendance Review Board (SARB) laws, although the report noted the DA filed 720
SARB cases from 2012-2014.
The jury is recommending more
involvement by the DA’s office, all school districts have programs for
recovering lost student attendance revenues, districts monitor and analyze
student attendance (which PUSD does now), and districts communicate better with
the community on the importance of attending school.
May
8, 2015
The
Porterville Register
By Rick Elkins
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