Nearly half of Hamilton County Schools students were truant last year

Jonathan Rainey slipped from honor student with perfect attendance last year to a truant who’s racked up nearly two months of unexcused absences this year.

The 17-year-old freshman said he struggled after transferring from Howard School of Academics and Technology to Red Bank High School, where so far this year he has missed 34 school days without an excuse.

“I started hanging out with the wrong people,” said Mr. Rainey, who often overslept and skipped school or simply didn’t answer during roll call.

Now he’s trying to turn his year around.

“I want to play football, and coach said I need to make passing grades and come to school,” Mr. Rainey said.

Nearly 50 percent of Hamilton County Schools’ 40,000 students last year had at least six unexcused absences, which makes them truant. From August through February of this school year, 9,270 students missed six or more days, records show.

“We have an attendance issue in this district,” Superintendent Jim Scales said. “It is not acceptable.”

Truancy in Hamilton County’s public schools drew attention last month after a “habitually absent” 6-year-old kindergartner was severely burned in a fire while she was alone in a kitchen on a school day.

Teachers say students obviously cannot learn when they are not in class, and as a result, they cannot keep up. A pattern of poor attendance often creates a cycle of absenteeism, which eventually can lead some students to drop out or turn to crime.

“If attendance is poor, you’ll get behind academically, they lose interest and it’s hard to catch up, which could lead to them dropping out,” Dr. Scales said.

Students skip school for many reasons, including wanting to sleep in, not getting along with other students or teachers or getting a job to support their family, said Sheryl Randolph, director of student services for Hamilton County Schools. One of the biggest culprits is academic frustration, she said.

“If you’re in the ninth grade, but you’re reading on a third-grade level, you’re not too excited to get up in the morning and listen to one more thing you don’t understand,” Ms. Randolph said.

Mr. Rainey’s mother, Lynda Headrick, knows her son, who has gone through drug rehabilitation, been kicked out of a group home and twice had to repeat grades, won’t get far if he doesn’t go to school.

Six weeks before her own high school graduation, Mrs. Headrick dropped out.

“I want him to succeed,” she said.

BY THE NUMBERS

Hamilton County Schools’ truancy is the highest among the five largest school systems in Tennessee, records show.

Ms. Randolph said that while the total number of truant students is high, most are not chronically absent.

“I would be naive to say we don’t have kids who have missed 50 days of school, but ... the majority have missed between six and eight days,” she said. “It’s still against the law, but out of 180 days, six or seven isn’t that bad.”

A review of 2007 school records shows:

* 43 percent (8,521) of truant students missed six to nine days of school;

* 40 percent (8,051) were absent 10 to 20 days;

* 13 percent of students (2,612) missed 21 to 40 days;

* nearly 4 percent (702) were absent 40 days or more.

Hamilton County’s figures show that boys are more likely to be truant than girls. In 2007, 10,575 boys were truant while 9,311 girls were truant.

After a student misses 41 days of school in a year, Ms. Randolph said, teachers consider whether to hold the student back from progressing to the next grade.

More than 15 percent of the students at Brainerd High School fell into this category last year, as did 8 percent of students at Hixson High and 6 percent at Howard School of Academics and Technology, school figures show.

Melanie Bautista, a third-grade teacher at Rivermont Elementary School, said helping habitually absent students keep up with their schoolwork is difficult, even in the lower grades.

At the elementary level, most truant students accumulate unexcused absences because their parents don’t know they need to turn in excuse notes to the school when their child is sick, Ms. Randolph said.

Judy Barker, the school system’s lead social worker, recently met with a McConnell Elementary parent whose first-grade daughter had missed 12 days of school so far this year and learned the single mother did not know she needed to send a note when her daughter was ill.

EFFECTS

Dr. Scales said reducing truancy is necessary to raise Hamilton County’s graduation rate by almost 10 percent and to eliminate the 11.5 percent dropout rate by 2011, goals detailed in his strategic plan.

The school system must have community support, he said.

“We need businesses who employ school-aged kids to ask to see their report cards, ask how they’re doing in school and ministers to talk about the value of being in school,” he said.

Students who repeatedly skip school likely will demonstrate poor workplace habits later in life, Dr. Scales said.

Chris Albright, juvenile court administrator, said students who have problems with the law typically first show up in truancy court.

“When ... they’re not going to school, you might as well start building the jail cell for them, because that’s going to be their ultimate outcome,” he said.

Hamilton County Board of Education Vice Chairman Jeffrey Wilson, a probation officer for juvenile court, said many of the delinquents he deals with every day are truants.

“There is a strong correlation between school attendance, and to some degree crime, graduation rates and ultimately, employability,” he said.

COMBATING TRUANCY

While improving attendance woes districtwide will take a “fundamental cultural shift in how (the community) perceives public schools,” combating student absenteeism is worth the fight, Dr. Scales said.

“We can’t throw up our hands and say, ‘This is out of control,’” he said. “It’s going to take one family, one child at a time, getting them engaged in school.”

Ms. Randolph said each truant student is addressed on an individual basis — a daunting task for the 16 school social workers who have nearly 20,000 charges among them.

The only official truant officer employed by the school system is stationed at Howard, as part of a state mandate to help improve the school’s attendance.

In Knox County, where there are fewer than one-third the number of truant students, the district attorney holds meetings for truant students and their parents three times a year.

District Attorney Randy Nichols said the program has reduced attendance problems in the nine years since it began.

In Nashville, a group led by Mayor Karl Dean last week suggested the city invest in a truancy center, separate from juvenile court where police can take students who have skipped school, Nashville Public Radio reported.

Mrs. Barker and other social workers recently organized a monthly truancy education program for parents called the “continued attendance reward program,” or CARP.

“What we’ve done in the past is not yielding the results we need,” she said.

When students become truant, they typically receive a letter from school about consequences if attendance doesn’t improve. If that doesn’t work, they are referred to a social worker who has a parent conference or makes a home visit to determine why students are missing class.

Mrs. Barker, who spends many of her days trekking around the county to track down truants, said the social workers focus on what keeps students from going to school.

“Attendance often becomes a secondary priority when many parents feel compelled to prioritize other concerns, such as financial, transportation, domestic and custody issues, frequent moves, substance abuse and health conditions,” she said.

TRACKING ABSENT STUDENTS

On a recent day at Red Bank Middle School, Mrs. Barker spent nearly an hour trying to find a missing seventh-grader who had been absent 16 days since January. After talking to the boy’s mother on the phone, Mrs. Barker found out the student was taking his backpack on the bus but leaving the building after school began, fooling his mother into thinking he was attending class.

The seventh-grader moved with his mother from Colorado halfway through the school year to escape an abusive situation with his father, who was divorcing his mother, Mrs. Barker said.

Red Bank Middle Principal Robert Alford said attendance is one of the biggest problems at his school.

“I’ve seen them get off the bus and head on down the road,” he said.

Debbie Philips, a school counselor at McConnell Elementary, keeps a detailed spreadsheet outlining the steps taken for the students who have unexcused absences or tardies at her school.

Though she is a counselor, Ms. Phillips said she spends at least half of her time dealing with attendance and truancy issues, sometimes referring cases to social workers.

When social worker intervention is ineffective, students are cited to informal juvenile court where they meet with a hearing officer who again explains that skipping school is against the law — in Tennessee, children must be enrolled in some kind of school from age 6 until their 18th birthday.

The last step is formal truancy court where students and parents can be fined, ordered to perform community service, or sent to jail in the most extreme cases.

Although nearly 20,000 students were considered truant during the 2006-07 school year, only 369 truancy petitions were filed in 2007, according to figures from Hamilton County Juvenile Court.

Mr. Albright said he is unsure about how to account for the discrepancy.

While Mrs. Barker is monitoring closely Mr. Rainey’s attendance at Red Bank, the 17-year-old also is on probation for resisting arrest after his mother called the police, claiming her son was delinquent.

For the past week, Mr. Rainey has attended school.

He said he is working on raising his grades. He now is passing three of his classes, instead of failing all six.

Though he has an uphill climb ahead of him, he said he is determined to change his ways.

“I woke up. I want to get a good job and not work at McDonald’s,” he said. “I’ve been improving since I started coming to school.”