Today Democratic California
Attorney General (and potential future gubernatorial candidate)
Kamala Harris figured out how to appeal to the powerful school
unions in the state without having to wade into the difficult
issues like their
massive pension debts or the fact that more and more
Californians are turning to charter
schools to get the heck out of the system.
The big crisis is truancy, she argues, and she and several
Democratic lawmakers introduced today a package of bills to fight
it. In her big
press release, she makes no bones about what the goal of
reducing truancy is; in the very first paragraph, Harris mentions
how absences cost the state school system $1.4 billion a year,
because state school funding is tied to attendance.
In a way, I’ve always appreciated how nakedly honest California
is about the reasons it’s fighting truancy. They want their money
and they want it now. Whether the quality of education or the way
students (or parents) are treated contributes to student truancy is
not a concern. The law says students need to be in school, the
school gets money for students being in school, and so the law is
going to drag students into school so that the schools will get
their money. Oh, hey, and maybe the law can make some money on the
side, too, by fining the parents.
Before looking at these proposed solutions, let’s look at a
moment at what Harris calls a crisis:
“According to the California Department of Education, 691,470
California elementary school children, or 1 out of every 5
elementary school students, were reported to be truant in the
2011-2012 school year.”
Holy crap, that’s a lot! But wait just a minute. Here is how the
State of California describes “truant”:
In California, a student is truant if he/she is absent or tardy
by more than 30 minutes without a valid excuse on 3 occasions in a
school year.
Yeah, so if Mom or Dad gets caught in traffic or is somehow late
three times in a school year that means the kids are well on their
way to becoming hardened criminals. California schools really,
really want their money, folks. Harris further notes that
one school reported that 92 percent of its students were truant in
one year, but given the state’s definition, it’s a little hard to
feel any outrage. She explains further that 250,000 elementary
school students miss more than 10 percent of the school year and
20,000 elementary school kids miss more than 35 days of school a
year. She describes this statistic as “shocking,” even though that
works out to less than a percent of the total students in
California’s school system.
Something has to be done, folks! Truant kids don’t learn things,
and then they drop out of school and cause crime. Clearly, the
solution would be to give parents flexibility in educating their
kids and provide a system that allows for choices that work for
families with different needs. Ha! Ha! Just kidding. You will
accommodate the state’s schedule, citizens! Instead, Harris
and lawmakers are suggesting more studies, more recordkeeping, more
reports, and a mandate that every county create a special review
board to deal with student attendance issues. That last one is an
interesting item, as the state already allows for these boards. As
part of the legislation
mandating their creation, they are adding that a board must
include a representative from the county’s district attorney’s
office. And if there are costs because of this mandate (like, say,
requiring somebody from the district attorney’s office to attend),
the state is required to reimburse them. How much money are they
going to end up spending chasing after this $1.4 billion lost from
student absences?
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