Covington, KT PD can arrest kids for Truancy

Yep.

TL;DR version: Covington is having problems with kids skipping class (13,500 unaccounted absences last year for grads K - 12), and they want to make sure kids graduate.

The law allows officers to take the kid to jail if their parents cannot be reached and the kid is not allowed back in school.

Ultimately though, it's all traced back to the money for the school system, cause the funding system for schools is based on attendance.

Anyways, what do y'all think?

Stay in goddamn school, that's all I can say.

More people in jail over forms of defiance that cause no harm to society. That's nice.

Why are we making kids go to school if they're not going there to learn of their own free will, again? So they can be inefficiently babysat and interfere with the students who actually want to be there?

Barkey, not that long ago you were talking about how law enforcement is drastically overworked and understaffed. Why would you even indirectly support a law that only makes that worse? Because the kids 'deserve' it?

edited 5th Jan '12 10:24:40 AM by Karkadinn

The law does require that kids go to school, usually until they turn 16. That said, this is a blatant waste of time and money, as well as likely ineffective. Nobody wants to roll kids up into jail for cutting school. (Plus, of course, it's not illegal to be suspended or expelled from school, so this can lead to due process issues if a suspended student is arrested for truancy.)

While I ordinarily would be happy to reduce parents' authority over their children, they really are the only power center that can get their kids to school. There isn't enough money to force every kid into juvey.

I never got the point of compulsory education. All it does is bring grades and funding levels down.

Compulsory education exists so that parents don't pull kids out of school to work. The compulsion is on the parents; it's not about whether the kid wants an education or not. Some of the kids whose parents would pull them out of school if they could actually WANT to learn.

I always thought the point of education was to you know. Educate. Not to have a high grade average for the school.

edited 5th Jan '12 12:44:55 PM by Silasw

Here's the thing. The punishment shouldn't rest JUST on the kid. Depending on the age of the child and the maturity thereof, I'm willing to say boot camp over juvie. However, where the hell are the parents?

I know I have to work weird hours but I know where my son is at all times and if I ever caught him skipping class, well, if it was a bad enough problem I guess I'll just have to work extra shifts to put his butt through military school.

You keep your kids in school so they have at least half a chance of being a decent asset to society and not some scrub or trouble maker. With the Bachelor's Degree becoming the new high school diploma, what do you think that does to people without one?

No. There should be a case by case examination and blame put on the parents as well as the kids. Seems like the sheer numbers of truant cases show that particular community needs one hell of a wake up call.

Because if they are out skipping school doing stupid shit all day, the risk of exposure to the influence of criminal elements skyrockets, thus creating problems down the line.

I don't give a shit how stupid a kid is. GO. TO. SCHOOL.

I'd rather have a law that held parents accountable for such things. Kids shouldn't be arrested for truancy, but if a kid is continuously skipping school and the parents aren't doing anything to stop it, they should be held accountable. If a kid isn't going to school and the parents aren't making him, what else can you really do? Send them to a boarding school?

We don't need more worthless assholes in society. Stay in school goddamnit. Where do those worthless assholes end up? On welfare.

edited 5th Jan '12 2:20:17 PM by Barkey

And schools aren't themselves breeding grounds for the criminal element?

Sometimes, an inner-city school actually is no better than staying home.

But in school you have a better chance of actually getting that little piece of paper that says you're worth enough to make french fries at least. Without it? You get what Barkley what talking about.

I'm sorry there are some really jacked up schools. But that's no reason to just throw your hands in the air and say better keep the kids at home where there is an almost 100% chance they won't get anywhere.

At least in school they have a fighting chance.

Unless they're homeschooled, in which case there's a very good chance that they'll come out a good deal ahead. But that has a lot to do with public schools just sucking that badly, and typically is regulated in some way.

edited 5th Jan '12 3:42:41 PM by Pykrete

Maybe I wasn't paying attention, but I thought they could already do this? I know in my school district they'll take your parents to court if you have more than a certain amount of unexcused absences.

You have to punish people who skip school for the same reason you have to enforce parking tickets. It's the law. If you didn't enforce it, then people would simply ignore it. You can't really selectively choose what laws you want to enforce.

As far as I can tell, students who are skipping school aren't booked; they're brought back to school. It sounds like this is a way to make suspensions and expulsions more punitive - students who are hanging out at the mall during their suspension can be booked.

Sending kids to jail for Trauncy: a good way of causing legal dismay and lowering education levels.

Education is one of the few times when you can say "this is for your own good, so you don't have a choice."

And in regards to truancy, I reckon it's something that needs to be handled on a case by case basis. I used to dog school from time to time but I still strolled through my exams and got some of the highest grades in my year.

You know, in the real world, not every day of class is useful. In fact, there were a fair number of days where going to school made absolutely zero sense. Especially near the end of the year. I did my share of truancy (as did most other people). Didn't impact my grade any (I was an A student)..actually for what it's worth I skipped with the school valedictorian. Go figure.

Mind you, this is generally a middle-class school district so things would for sure be quite different.

I never skipped class, but I'm not gonna lie, there were times I was tempted. Didn't make much of a difference in middle school, because I never did any of the work anyway, but I think in high school it was a good habit. It's just, erm, not the ONLY good school-related habit it's helpful to have. Not by far. There are people who can handle skipping sometimes and still do really good because they've got all the rest of the stuff down pat. So while truancy is an issue, it's not really the only issue that needs to be looked at - just the one that's easiest to crack down on, I suppose.

I'm talking about days where literally, you could go to class and were expected to just sit there and wait.

oh god, I know those days. Also movie days.

Ok, time to attempt to make sense while giving an opinion. First of all (for no real reason), a lot of schools do have things wrong with them, but I can't go into that without a wall of text. While I could go on for several even larger walls of text about issues with any educational system, there are benefits too, which are the point, although saying they were somewhat overshadowed by other things (largely testing) would be an understatement.Back to the point, people will go truant whatsoever anyway. Sometimes it's the kid's fault, sometimes the parent's, sometimes both, sometimes even neither but there are many reasons and possible ways to deal with it. Arrests? not going to work. Truthfully, very few things work.

Or in short, education can be considerably flawed but shouldn't be and sometimes isn't, and people can very rarely be stopped going truant, with this being a way I sincerely doubt works.

The problem arises when the school starts thinking it's obligated to pass everyone. You get classes that just try to do their damndest to shunt everyone through with a C and flush them through the system, and it winds up doing nobody any good because there's nothing to get out of it whether or not you came with the intention of learning anything.

Honestly, you could've taken a blowtorch to about half of my high school + middle school curriculum and most of my college general ed, not lost a damn thing, graduated everyone who was going to do so about five years earlier, and come out with a shitload of funding left for additional assistance and several grand of debt less per student.

Hell, most of the reason we had problem kids still hanging around the high school by senior year was because they wanted an outlet to peddle drugs.

edited 7th Jan '12 5:44:31 PM by Pykrete

When schools fail to adequately address problems like bullying that occur within them, then I don't think it's morally legitimate to jail kids for trying to avoid school.

And if school is the only alternative to "more exposure to criminal elements" (right, like their school experiences aren't going to encourage crime at all) then that's another sign that your society is already pretty fucked up.

Or alternatively we could give up on schools, and use distance education from now on...

edited 7th Jan '12 6:37:22 PM by HiddenFacedMatt

I'm on the side that school should be mandatory, but that the parents (not the kids) should be held responsible for truancy.

^ Bullying can be bad, but in all but the most extreme cases it's far preferable to missing an education. B'sides, school doesn't just teach math and stuff; in fact, I'd argue that the most important thing about it is teaching kids how to deal with other people.

edited 7th Jan '12 7:22:26 PM by RTaco