Thursday, September 02, 2010

Rural Alaska schools take legal action against parents to improve attendance

Rural Alaska school districts have joined with a growing number of school districts across the country in pursing legal action against parents whose children don't attend school. Parents of truant children could face jail time under the new policy, and the Alaska schools are not alone, Jill Burke of the Alaska Dispatch reports. "Already this year school districts in Texas, Pennsylvania and Alabama have resorted to arresting parents," Burke writes. As administrators look to turn around poorly performing rural schools, improving attendance rates has been among the first areas they check.

"In the Inupiat Eskimo village of Kivalina, getting kids to class is a top priority this year for the Northwest Arctic Borough School District," Burke writes. "For at least the fifth year in a row, Kivalina's McQueen School has failed to get its students to meet federal reading and writing standards." Last year students at the school missed on average more than two months of class, and only eight of the 66 students who took standardized tests were judged proficient in math. Nine students scored proficient in reading and writing.

Under Alaska's compulsory education laws "for every five days a school age child misses class without a legitimate excuse, parents can be charged with a civil violation and fined up to $500," but law enforcement agents were often too busy to follow through on schools' complaints. Now Michelle Woods, attendance counselor for Northwest Arctic, is forcing state troopers to investigate by charging parents with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a misdemeanor crime that carries a penalty of up to year in jail and requires an investigation from troopers as well as the Office of Child Services. "It's not a matter of putting (parents) in jail," Woods told Burke. "What we want is the kid in school." (Read more)

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