The reason schools try to keep kids in class and off the streets

Rebecca Hedman was just 13 years old when she became a runaway.

It was 1993 when she was picked up on a Spokane street corner by a man wanting to pay for sex. The night ended with Rebecca’s murder and her body being dumped into the Spokane River.

After her death there were the usual questions. Did this have to happen? What could be done to stop another child from suffering the same fate?

It led to what are now known as the Becca Laws.

In 1995, the Legislature passed a bill that contained a set of requirements for schools to keep track of their students. It also required that they report to the court system any child who missed more than seven days of school in a single month or 10 days in a year.

Now, 20 years later, some are still wondering whether they’ve done enough.

Liz Coker is a researcher with the University of Washington. She recently completed a study for the state courts looking at how many schools are complying with the Becca Laws and what happens when children are reported to the system.

“No one who thinks about it thinks that a truancy petition by itself is gonna get a kid back into school. It doesn’t,” Coker said. “What’s in place for the kids that are petitioned truant?”

The biggest problem is that only about one-third of the students who chronically miss school are actually reported as truant, she explained. There is nothing in place to encourage schools to comply with the law.

“I’ve heard of no case in which a district has been punished for not filing truancy petitions,” Coker said.

Her research points to one possible solution that keeps children in school and out of the court system. Community truancy boards intervene before the student is sent to a judge.

A truancy board can come in a variety of forms, but it generally includes representatives from the school, the court and the community who meet with a family to discuss the challenges that are keeping a child out of the classroom. Tara Rodriguez, Truancy Supervisor with Pierce County Juvenile Courts, says there are truancy boards in 11 of the 16 school districts they serve.

“They’re an early intervention approach. They build bridges between families, the schools and the family,” Rodriguez explained.

The truancy boards also build trust, so families can feel free to talk about what can be very personal issues like poverty, abuse and medical difficulties.

“It’s, I think, harder for chronic truant kids who come to court,” said Rodriguez. “It’s harder to reengage them back into school.”

It’s not easy, especially for larger school districts, to create truancy boards and keep them going. Tacoma Public Schools is one of the Pierce County Districts that does not have one. Neither does the Seattle Public School District. However, Truancy Specialist Jesse Jimenez says they used to have one, the district just couldn’t keep it running.

Now they rely on Truancy Workshops run by the district. They show parents and students a PowerPoint about the Becca Laws, then talk to them individually about what barriers they face.

They also get the schools involved. A couple of Seattle schools started a phone system that calls students each morning to encourage them to get up and come to class.

In another instance, the district hired a taxi to pick up four kids who didn’t have a stable living situation. Mom and dad were working odd jobs and moving the family between motels inside and outside of Seattle.

“It was hard for them to focus on school and the oldest son wanted to help them out and go to work,” Jimenez recalled. They helped that teen find a job after school and in the summer, but let him know that, in the long run, school would be a greater benefit for his family and for his own future.

There are three things that connect each of the successful intervention approaches: addressing issues in the home, creating a support system in school, and finding support in the community.

Unfortunately, Jimenez says it’s taken them years to figure this out partly because the Becca Laws are so vague.

“It’s very frustrating because the law is there, we have to follow it, but there really isn’t a model for how we handle these cases,” Jimenez said.

Coker pointed out another major problem that needs to be addressed. According to her research, most of the students who have filed truancy petitions are in high school. For them, it might be too late. They’re already failing their classes. Many of these children began showing up late or missing entire days in elementary school.

“Everybody I spoke to said that’s where we need to get them, in elementary school,” Coker said. “Middle school is the other big thing. Elementary school, the kids tend to keep going. But, it’s in middle school where the problem really starts to show.”

By missing time in elementary school, children start to fall behind. When they’re hit with the challenges of middle school they simply stop going altogether, or they continue to struggle and end up failing classes in high school.

Coker hopes that with new data being tracked and new research being done, that will start to change.

Some of that research is being shared Thursday and Friday at the 2015 Becca Conference in Tacoma.