Board Favors Plan to Send Some Truants to Juvenile Hall

Habitual truants could be sentenced to as many as five days in Juvenile Hall under a program informally endorsed this week by the Centinela Valley Union High School District Board of Trustees.

Four of the trustees said Tuesday night that they favor the program, which was created by Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner and will be presented for formal approval at the next board meeting on June 13. The program would take effect in September.

“I hope something will click so there will be a turnaround� in the truancy problem, said trustee Ruth Morales. “Even if the statistics change just a little bit, I think it’s a step in the right direction.�

About 10% of the district’s 6,100 high school students merit special counseling and programs outside the regular classroom because of serious truancy problems, Supt. McKinley M. Nash said in an interview Wednesday.

Only students with the most intractable problems--1% or fewer--would be likely to be referred for possible incarceration under the district attorney’s new Truancy Mediation Program, Nash said.

In addition to the student penalties in the program, parents would face prosecution if they are found to be responsible for their children’s excessive absences--when, for example, they repeatedly write false excuses or keep a teen-ager home to baby-sit. A first-time infraction by a parent could carry a fine of up to $100 or special counseling; the most serious misdemeanor offense could mean a $500 fine and 25 days in jail.

The district attorney would be called in only after counseling and other school truancy programs had been tried without success, according to Adalbert T. Botello, chief deputy of the district attorney’s juvenile division in Inglewood, who spoke to the school board Tuesday night.

Centinela Valley is the first school district in the South Bay to hear a formal presentation on the new countywide program, Botello said. An official in the district attorney’s office said Thursday that 160 truants have been referred to the program countywide, though she was unable to say what school districts the students attended. None of those students have yet been sent to Juvenile Hall.

Nash praised the program, which provides stiff penalties to deter students from chronic truancy.

He said the Centinela Valley district’s overall dropout rate is less than 14%, compared to 37% statewide, partly because of its intensive efforts to deter truancy. But the district wants to reduce truancy even further, he said.

Link to Achievement

In the first semester of the current school year, 9% of Hawthorne High School students were picked up as truants. The rate was 12% at Leuzinger High School, Nash said. Each school has an enrollment of about 2,700. The remainder of students in the district attend Lloyde High School, an alternative education program for students who have difficulties in the regular program.

District officials hope the program will have a positive effect on learning by keeping more students in school, Nash said.

The program is also expected to reduce gang activity and daytime crimes committed by truants in Hawthorne, Lawndale and Lennox, Nash said.

Reiner, in unveiling the program in February, said law enforcement agencies have found that habitual truancy “is the No. 1 precursor of ultimately serious criminal behavior.�

“If you can clear the streets of truants, you can dramatically reduce daytime residential burglaries,� he said. Up to two-thirds of such crimes are committed by truants, he said.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Deputy Dist. Atty. Leslie Hanke described how California educators and law enforcement officials have grown increasingly frustrated with the state’s truancy problem since 1975.

That year, the Legislature enacted a law limiting the power of the juvenile courts to incarcerate habitual truants and juvenile status offenders, those who commit an offense that would not be a crime if they were committed by an adult, such as curfew violations.

As a result, she said, the district attorney’s office “got out of the business� of prosecuting habitual truants. Local School Attendance Review Boards were created to take over the work previously handled by the juvenile courts. These boards, however, had no authority to compel students to attend school, she said.

A 1988 state Supreme Court ruling restored the district attorney’s authority to incarcerate habitual truants for up to five days when found in contempt of court, for such things as violating an order to attend school or counseling.

The emphasis will be on returning youngsters to school, not keeping them in custody, Hanke said. “Our purpose is not to incarcerate truants, but to assist in returning kids to school,� she said.

At the trustees’ meeting June 13, Nash will discuss existing truancy programs that would have to be tried before the district would refer a case to the district attorney.

After the presentation, Botello and Hanke fielded questions asked by teen-age students from a night-school government class who attended Tuesday’s board meeting at Nash’s request.

The students, some of whom were in night school to complete classes they missed because of truancy, listened attentively to the presentation.

They were particularly concerned about whether missing a single class or a single day would trigger the penalties, and were assured that the district attorney would be consulted only as a last resort.

A couple of students also objected to the penalties for parents, saying that high-school students, not parents, should be held responsible. Hanke said parents would only be prosecuted when it can be shown that they were directly responsible for allowing children to remain out of school.

TRUANCY PROGRAM AT CENTINELA VALLEY

The school district currently notifies parents on the fifth day of an unexcused absence.

Students can make up missed class time after school or, for substantial amounts of time, on Saturdays.

If the student’s truancy continues, he is assigned to “Opportunity Classes,� where students receive special counseling and stay in the same classroom for two or three periods to reduce the opportunity to leave school.

The next step is referral to continuation school, where the district provides one teacher for each 12 students, compared to 20 in the Opportunity Classes and 26 in regular classes. The smaller classes provide special counseling to help students get back on track.

Students also are picked up by patrols for the truancy abatement program sponsored by the city of Hawthorne and the school district. Truants are picked up and taken to Lloyde High School, a continuation school campus for counseling.

Under the new program, the district would create a School Attendance Review Board that would hear the most severe cases and provide intensified counseling for students and parents.

If truancy continues, the case would be referred to the district attorney’s office, which would ask a judge to order the student to attend school or counseling. If the student violates that order, he could be sent to Juvenile Hall.