By Toni Garrard Clay/AISD Communications Specialist
Precinct 1 Justice of the Peace Randy Daniel is no pushover. Twice a month, the former Athens mayor becomes the stern face of the law to truant Athens ISD students and their parents who find themselves in his court.
“Clearly, the law says you have to go to school until you’re 18,” said Daniel. “There are no exceptions for ‘I don’t feel like going today.’ … Because if you miss enough school, you’re behind everybody else. It makes it hard on you to catch up, hard on the teachers who have to catch you up, and hard on the administrators who have to keep track of you. It creates a big problem for everybody.”
The state’s compulsory attendance law requires a school district to enforce attendance requirements, which may lead to the assessment of fines and other penalties by a court of law against both a truant student and the student’s parents or guardians.
“We focus on extreme and repeat offenders,” said Athens High School Principal Jami Ivey. “In those cases, it’s usually habitual absences with no excuses even offered.”
Judge Daniel said when he first began overseeing truancy court, he was inclined more toward leniency, often assigning community service over fines. His leniency evaporated, he said, when he observed how often community service was not completed and the same students returned to his court. At the Jan. 21 truancy hearings, which involved 20 high school students, the lowest fine he assessed was $250. The highest was the maximum-allowed $500. “This is not play court,” said Daniel.
“There’s a high correlation between kids who don’t come to school and kids who don’t pass the STAAR test or their classes,” said Athens High School Assistant Principal Bryan Hurst. “When kids don’t come to school, there’s no learning going on at all. Having them here is half the battle.”
Everyone involved in the partnership between Athens ISD and Judge Daniel’s court agrees that when fines come into play, parents of truant students get far more serious about monitoring their children’s attendance.
“The school has to do so many things before they can even file a case,” noted Daniel. “They notify parents, have the kids sign an improvement contract. Once they get to this point, the court needs to show some teeth while we can still get through to these kids who are blowing school off.”
AHS students make up the vast majority of students who are summoned to truancy court. In a handful of cases, the parents of habitually absent elementary students have also been summoned to appear before Judge Daniel.
In addition to being posted to the school website and included in the student handbook, all parents and guardians were recently mailed an overview of the district’s attendance policy, which includes the following: Athens ISD may file a complaint in the appropriate court if a student is absent 10 or more days or parts of days in a six-month period of the school year, or is absent from school three or more days or parts of days in a four-week period. Students in grades 9-12 who do not maintain 90 percent attendance in each class per semester may not be promoted or receive credit for a semester course. Exemptions are allowed in cases such as documented healthcare appointments and required court appearances.
The purpose of truancy court can be summed up nicely with a story Judge Daniel shared. “I tell the kids in my court this: ‘Hey, when you’re missing school, what are the kids over there doing?’ They usually look at me like a calf staring at a new gate. I tell them, ‘They’re over there preparing to become your boss.’”