Decriminalizing truancy and positively supporting school attendance

Students are late or truant from school for a variety reasons. These reasons range from emotional and mental health problems, school environment, special education needs, economic pressures, substance abuse, physical or emotional abuse in the home, lack of adequate transportation, fear of being harmed at school, bullying, and more. Research shows that schools, not courts, are the best way to address the underlying problems that cause truancy. In Los Angeles, however, the daytime curfew law -- or LAMC 45.04 -- does not address these root causes of truancy, but rather penalizes students with police stops, court visits and hefty fines. According to data, police issued more than 47,000 truancy tickets from 2004 to 2009. Each curfew fine can cost more than $250 and require students and their families to miss additional time from school and work to go to court to resolve them.

In October 2011, the Children's Defense Fund-CA, along with it's Dignity in Schools partners Public Counsel, the Community Rights Campaign, ACLU of Southern California, CADRE and Youth Justice Coalition, worked with the Los Angeles School Police Department (LASPD) to release a new protocol intended to reduce the number of daytime curfew tickets written to students. The directive puts an end to curfew “sweeps” without cause, where school police ticketed students just outside or even on school grounds. It also reminds officers that merely violating curfew is not a reason to search, handcuff, or detain a student, and it charges officers to encourage students to get to campus rather than to ticket them. These are important modifications to ensure that the nation's largest school district police force is working with schools, administrators, students and parents to keep students on track within the educational environment by reducing court appearances and increasing alternate attendance improvement program alternatives offered through a non-penal system or judicial environment.

Click here to see the LASPD truancy directive, the Dignity in Schools - Los Angeles press release on the directive, and the LA Times article about the directive.

Alternatives to zero tolerance discipline policies 

Zero tolerance discipline policies have long been recognized to be ineffective at reducing negative behavior and to undermine achievement. Moreover, zero tolerance policies are almost always applied unfairly, disproportionately impacting young men of color. Indeed, under zero tolerance approaches nationwide, we have seen African American boys suspended at often two to three times the rate of other youth.

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board recognized this in 2007 when passing school-wide positive behavior support (SW-PBS), a positive approach to discipline that has been shown to work quite dramatically when implemented – leading to a 60% reduction in disciplinary problems and out of school suspensions. The problem, however, is that since SW-PBS passed several years ago, implementation has been spotty or non-existent at many schools in LAUSD.

In October 2011, CDF-CA, along with our coalition partners in the Dignity in Schools Campaign LA Chapter (DSC-LA), presented at the school board meeting on a number of recommendations to improve implementation of SW-PBS as well as data collection and transparency around the process. At the meeting and after our presentations, Superintendent John Deasy called for broader implementation SW-PBS, and Board President Monica Garcia agreed with our recommendation for the board to review discipline data quarterly to discuss progress and challenges. LAUSD is also taking our recommendation to develop a 3-5 year plan for implementation of SW-PBS.

Click here to see DSC-LA’s press statement about SW-PBS, and below to see two news articles about the board meeting and the resulting commitment to implementing SW-PBS.

http://www.scpr.org/news/2011/10/26/29586/lausd-review-discipline-policies-wake-complaints/

Related articles to ending zero tolerance policies and promoting Positive Behavior Support:

http://www.scpr.org/news/2011/11/02/29693/la-unified-holds-first-positive-behavior-symposium/

Related News:

http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/commentary/movie-miento/la-activists-push-for-overhaul-of-harsh-discipline-policies.html