County truancy initiatives are picking up momentum

Thursday, Oct. 5, 2006

Prince George's County's multi-pronged campaign against truancy is moving into a higher gear.

The county’s Chief Administrative Judge William Missouri has ordered a task force to investigate the feasibility of establishing a permanent truancy court.

State prosecutors are preparing to bring parents into court to face fines or jail time if they don’t get their truant kids back into school.

And the police department has committed to a countywide effort to round up truants and take them back to school.

‘‘It’s a signal that there's going to be less tolerance for truancy,” said prosecutor and District 47 delegate Doyle Niemann, of Mount Rainier said. ‘‘That’s as to the parents and as to the students.”

Niemann is also a member of the task force that will study the truancy court option.

Phil Lee, president of the Kettering Civic Federation and member of the task force, praised Missouri for recognizing the problem’s depth but said a truancy court’s operations would ‘‘be inundated with cases before it got off the ground.”

‘‘We’re going to have to determine how many cases a judge can hear in a day,” Lee said. ‘‘There’s a hidden truth out there that there’s more truancy than what people realize.“

The task force is expected to have a report out by March. Lee helped administer an anti-truancy program at Largo High School that reduced the number of students cutting class.

Two county police officers were attached to the pilot program. Police said that daytime crimes were significantly reduced, because of enforcement of anti-truancy laws at Bowie High School in Bowie,.

Many day time crimes were directly attributable to juveniles stealing cars, vandalizing businesses and even burglarizing homes when they should have been in school, according to police.

In the District 2 police area, which encompasses Bowie and Largo, statistics for April showed that burglary was down 36.2 percent from the same time in 2005, while auto thefts were down by 29.1 percent from 2005.

Basic thefts were down by 20 percent, police statistics showed.

Sharon Taylor, spokeswoman for the police department, said the pilot program’s success proved that a countywide effort is needed.

The specific plans of how the program will work are still up to Chief Melvin C. High, Taylor said, but he will soon come to a decision.

‘‘We’re going to make sure that when we see young people, we’re getting them back to where they’re supposed to be,” Taylor said. ‘‘We are going to take the program countywide.”

Niemann, who also sits on the task force, said the school system has been reluctant to report serious truancy violations to the state’s attorney’s office for prosecution of parents because they believed the office did not place a priority on prosecuting truancy violations.

But that has changed, Niemann said.

Under state law, parents can be held responsible for children's continued truancy and can even be placed in jail for up to 10 days.

‘‘We tried about 18 cases [of parents with chronically truant children] last school year,” Niemann said. ‘‘We anticipate there will be more cases once people realize we’re taking it more seriously.”

Many of last year’s cases did not end in jail time, but about 40 parents from three county high schools each were called up to Juvenile Judge Melanie Shaw Geter to answer for their student’s behavior.

Those sessions are continuing this month, Niemann said, and include parents from Nicholas Orem, William Wirt and James Carroll Middle schools. They are even bringing in parents from Adelphi Elementary School, Niemann said.

The sessions served as a warning to parents of the consequences and some principals said that they resulted in more children coming back to class after long absences.

This year Niemann said his office, in conjunction with county schools, the juvenile justice department and the Department of Social Services, will take a closer look at middle schools to nip truant behavior in the bud.

‘‘Parents have more control over their kids at that point,” Niemann said. ‘‘We have to get to those children before the truancy habit gets firmly established.”

The county school system has also taken steps to reduce truancy.

Schools CEO John Deasy is enacting a plan that hires more Pupil Personnel Workers (PPWs) who seek out and work with students who are truant or at risk of being truant.

These workers help get the truant students back into school or help prevent them from skipping in the first place.

E-mail Guy Leonard at gleonard@gazette.net.