Kamala Harris's answer on jailing parents whose kids missed school

[left-of-center2012]

https://tinyurl.com/y2rf745l

When she was the San Francisco district attorney, Harris took it upon herself to boost school attendance rates. She did this by threatening to prosecute parents whose kids missed too many school days without good reason.

“I believe a child going without an education is tantamount to a crime, so I decided I was going to start prosecuting parents for truancy,” Harris said in a 2010 speech. On the presidential campaign trail these days, Harris strikes a softer tone when she’s asked about her “anti-truancy” initiative. She notes that school attendance rates improved and that no parents were jailed in San Francisco, where she was district attorney from 2004 to 2011.

HuffPost reported Wednesday that Kings County has charged “19 misdemeanors under Harris’ law in the past four years,” while Orange County has “charged a total of 22 parents under Harris’ law.” There may be other cases out there, but unfortunately there’s a dearth of data on this question.

But that’s only part of the story. After San Francisco, Harris went on to be attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017. She took her anti-truancy initiative statewide. And some parents were jailed as a result. She championed a law that other district attorneys outside San Francisco used to jail at least a handful of parents.

The California law’s harshest penalties allow for jailing parents up to one year if their children have unexcused absences for at least 10 percent of school days, along with fines up to $2,000.

[dsc]

1. what law of hers?

She wasn't a legislator in California

[left-of-center2012]

2. Did you read the linked article?

"When she was running for state attorney general, Harris championed a bill to take her anti-truancy program statewide.
State lawmakers and then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) approved the proposal,
and the new law took effect in 2011,
just as Harris took office."

[Blue_true]

4. What you failed to point out was whether the statewide law was like what she championed.

I admit that I have no sympathy for parents that don't get their kids to school. Some have decent reasons (single parent with limited resources and no local family, ect), but getting kids in school and highlighting the problem leads to solutions faster than simply keeping kids out of school.

[left-of-center2012]

7. Have a nice day

[Blue_true]

11. Some reply.

Since the statewide law was pushed by Arnold, it is a good guess that it weighed more to the punitive side that what Harris had done in SF. So just saying that her process went statewide is really coming up short, what were the similarities, differences in application? You did not touch on those.

[left-of-center2012]

14. okie dokie

thank you for your input

[Igel]

10. Some have decent reasons.

Many don't.

I don't think "I had to be elsewhere and so my elementary school kid was able to not get up and get herself to the bus stop, and instead spent the day alone or hanging out with friends" is a crappy reason.

The ed research on absences is fishy. If a kid misses so many days of school it increases the chance of poor behavior and decreases the chance of passing. (Some find that actual number to put in that "so many" place holder is quite small.) But it really depends on the kid involved, and many low-income kids are the most at risk. They miss a couple of days of school, don't catch up, and in the end are a perpetual disruption to class and wind up with a huge amount of content that they didn't manage to learn and retain. Even if they manage to pass, it shows up as a deficit in the future.

I suspect that a lot of the variance is because of the different backgrounds and ability of the parent(s) involved to hold the kid's feet to the fire, so to speak, in catching up, as well as the reason for the absence without an excuse provided. I mean, my kid has some unexcused absences just because he was home sick and each parent thought the other provided a note. Then again, I know kids who are absent while their parents are convinced they're in school and others whose parents are either self-medicating or indifferent to what the kid does because they've completely given up. (As one teacher put it, the home he grew up in he'd often get himself and his kid brother ready for school, stepping over the bodies of their barely clad stupefied parents and their friends after a party the previous night, after making sure nobody ODed.)

[Blue_true]

12. Harris had good rationale for her process in SF.

Kids that are not in school are put at a massive disadvantage, as you pointed out. They don't catch up and at some point, they simply give up and suffer all the negative consequences while procreating kids that are likely to go down the same path.

[dsc]

5. I actually hadn't.

I will say, if this is limited to parents of elementary and middle school students and only after several absences and other interventions for those absences, I have no problem with this law. Not making sure your child goes to school is negligence and gravely threatens their future. We would have no problem jailing someone who hit their child and in many ways this kind of negligence is just as bad.

[bigtree]

3. 2016 report

Attorney General Kamala D. Harris Releases 2016 Truancy Report, Demonstrating Years of Progress, Persistent Challenges

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

SAN FRANCISCO – Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today issued the fourth annual statewide report on elementary school truancy and chronic absenteeism in California, In School + On Track 2016. The report, part of the work of the Department’s Bureau of Children’s Justice, finds that an estimated 210,000 K-5 students in California missed 10% of the school year in 2015-2016, making up 7.3% of elementary students in the state. The report also confirms earlier research on the disproportionately high rates of absenteeism among African American, Native American, and Pacific Islander elementary school students, special education students, and foster and homeless youth.

The report does highlight that significant progress is being made, with school districts increasingly taking action to ensure children are in school, on time, every day. Improving school attendance has long been a centerpiece of Attorney General Harris’ public service. As District Attorney of San Francisco, Attorney General Harris first drew the connection between chronic absenteeism, third grade reading levels, dropping out of school, and future involvement in the criminal justice system (as a perpetrator or victim of crime). In the past decade, she has brought this issue to the forefront of state and national conversations about how to keep our communities safe and develop a thriving workforce.

Recently, the federal Department of Education launched Every Student, Every Day: A National Initiative to Address and Eliminate Chronic Absenteeism, which is modeled on Attorney General Harris’ longstanding work on this effort. “To be smart on crime and invest wisely in California’s economic future, we must eliminate elementary school truancy,” said Attorney General Harris.

“Chronically absent children are far more likely to drop out of school and enter into the criminal justice system. This is a solvable problem: with better data, monitoring, and communication with parents, we can continue to make significant strides toward ensuring students are in school and on track to meet their full potential.”

Drawing from four years of longitudinal data—a sample of almost half a million kindergarten to 5th grade students from nearly 200 school districts—In School + on Track 2016 includes the most comprehensive analysis to-date on the high rates of absenteeism among California’s elementary school students.

The report finds that California continues to face an attendance crisis, with an estimated 210,000 K-5 students missing 10% of the 2015-16 school year, and that this crisis disproportionately affects African American, low-income, special education, and highly mobile students.

School suspensions also severely exacerbate the attendance crisis and have an inordinate impact on boys, low-income students, and students with special needs. In fact, 55% of students in this study who had more than one suspension were also chronically absent. Low-income students accounted for 82% of all suspensions and 30% of all suspensions involved students receiving special education services.

Further, boys were suspended at three times the rate of girls, and foster children were suspended at two and a half times the rate of all other students. The report also finds that African American students, while making up just 5% of the elementary school student population, represent 22% of all suspensions. Early attendance patterns also have a significant impact on academic achievement. The data from this year’s report revealed that three-quarters of students who were chronically absent in kindergarten and first grade did not meet the California state standards in math and English language arts in the third grade. Despite persistently high rates of absenteeism and suspensions, however, California school districts have taken significant steps to improve elementary school attendance over the past several years:

99% of districts surveyed for this study reported that they have implemented or plan to implement policies and programs to improve elementary school attendance this year.

In the 2012-13 school year, just over half of school districts surveyed said that they tracked student attendance data longitudinally (over time). This year, 85% of districts reported that they track attendance longitudinally, allowing teachers and administrators to understand individual student attendance patterns, craft targeted interventions, and evaluate the success of those interventions.

Since the 2013-14 school year, 163 school districts (34% of those surveyed) have changed their discipline policies so students do not miss as much school for suspensions, or have reduced their overall number of suspensions.

In addition, the report highlights the progress being made at the state level in collecting and tracking student attendance. At the end of the 2016-2017 school year, all local education agencies in California will for the first time be required to submit to the California Department of Education data on student absences, excused and unexcused, as well as out-of-school suspensions as required by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

Chronic absence rates will also become part of the state’s new accountability system. Attorney General Harris’ 2013 In School + On Track (https://oag.ca.gov/truancy/2013) report contained the first statewide statistics on California’s elementary school truancy crisis and directly linked public education and public safety.

The 2014 In School + On Track report (https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/tr/truancy_2016_en.pdf) released updated data and looked specifically at gaps in state infrastructure for collecting attendance information and disparities in student attendance and discipline by race, income, and other subgroups such as foster youth. In School + On Track 2015 (https://oag.ca.gov/truancy/2015) allowed for an in-depth look at chronic absence rates by gender and at suspension rates across subgroups, revealing that absence rates tend to vary more by race than by gender, boys have significantly higher suspension rates than girls, and African American boys in particular have the highest elementary school suspension rates.

As District Attorney of San Francisco, Attorney General Harris started a citywide elementary school truancy initiative in 2006. In the course of investigating factors contributing to the city’s violent crime rate, she found that 94% of San Francisco homicide victims under age 25 were high school dropouts.

Then-District Attorney Harris formed a partnership with the school district to inform parents about their legal duty to ensure that their children attended school, provide parents of chronically truant students with wrap-around services and school-based mediation, and prosecute parents in the most severe cases where other interventions did not work. The initiative also served as a model for SB 1317 (Leno), which defined "chronic truancy" for the first time under state law and established the initiative's model of combining meaningul services with smart sanctions in the California Penal Code. The bill was sponsored by then-District Attorney Harris and enacted into law in 2010.

The report is available in its entirety online at: https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/tr/truancy_2016_en.pdf The photo gallery of the press conference is available at: https://oag.ca.gov/news/photo-gallery
# # #

[Blue_true]

6. Thanks for facts and a full explanation of Harris' goals for the policy.

Every goal was laudable and on target. Shows that she cared about the economic futures and quality of life for kids in California, and she took the lead with an innovative idea.

[left-of-center2012]

8. That was 2 years ago

She molded her comments to 2019's run for the White House.

[bigtree]

9. the program's available at the link

...molded or not, it's the AG's (Kamala Harris') report.

[mcar]

13. +1