Building For The Future

Committee continues work on county truancy ordinance

Tony Carton for The Prairie Advocate

A committee comprised of education, economic, and law enforcement professionals continues working to formulate a truancy ordinance that will succeed in Carroll County.

While acknowledging that school attendance improved during the last year, those drafting the ordinance are looking for still more ways to bring students to the classroom on a regular basis.

Causes and effects

Marie Stiefel is the Regional Superintendent at the Carroll/Jo Daviess/Stephenson County Regional Office of Education, and she serves on the committee working to develop and present a viable truancy ordinance to the Carroll County Board.

"Truancy is a more serious problem in the West Carroll district than it is in the Eastland or the Milledgeville-Chadwick School Districts," Stiefel said. "It's larger, with more students, and there is more possibility for truant students, also there is a higher rate of low income families in the West Carroll District, and there does seem to be a correlation between low-income and truancy."

She said that truancy can be a generation-to-generation problem, and that in the more chronically truant student's families, her office often sees a family system or generational pattern of truancy and eventual dropping-out. Stiefel noted two short term effects of truancy.

"One is academic," she explained. "If you are not in school, you get behind on assignments, coursework, and you also don't receive the instruction making it harder to keep on track."

She noted that sometimes in the lower grades the smarter students can keep up even if they miss school, but she said that becomes harder in the upper grades.

"There is a social consequence also," she continued. "If you are not in school on a regular basis then those students who miss too much school tend to be ostracized by the others, and they don't have the friends that the others do because they're not there. That's sometimes every bit as serious as getting behind academically because that also contributes the risk for dropping out later."

Stiefel also recognized areas where the schools face consequences because of truancy.

"There are financial consequences for the schools because state aid is based on average daily attendance," she said. "The districts have to distribute a school report card every year, and one of the statistics on it is the average daily attendance. No one wants to have a low rate of attendance."

She said that one of the things the committee is trying to accomplish with a truancy ordinance is the ability to provide immediate consequences for truancy.

"Under the current law, the State's Attorney cannot file a court case until a student has missed 18 unexcused days over the last 180 days," she said. "In our experience, by the time a student misses 18 days they've also been called-in excused or had some legitimate sick days in there too, so they might have missed an awful lot of school before we finally can file a court case."

She repeated that having a faster means of enforcing consequences would be helpful.

"We don't want to wait until someone misses ten percent of the school year because by then they've missed out on a lot," Stiefel said. "We want this to be something beneficial that would help us to provide some early consequences for legitimately truant students. We don't want to penalize everybody under the sun for the least little thing. We are looking for a happy medium."

Providing incentives

Julie Katzenberger served as Assistant Principal at West Carroll High School last year and is at the Middle School this year. She said the attention paid to the problem of truancy is paying off.

"Our attendance has improved," Katzenberger said. "It was a focus and anytime you focus on something it's bound to improve."

She said West Carroll decided to focus on improving attendance because the district was below state average.

"I talked with all the high school kids stressing the importance of attending school regularly," she said. "We really advertised the incentives program. One month we rewarded them with a breakfast at the Events Center and I think many of the teachers spent extra time emphasizing attendance."

She said the district implemented attendance incentives and based those incentives on a policy of a student only having one excused absence per quarter.

"Bear's Drive Inn put in $400, so we did a hundred dollar drawing each quarter," she said. "The National Bank donated stadium blankets. Blue Appraisals donated $100. There were a number of different things that came in from throughout the community that sparked the interests of the kids and helped provide incentive for good attendance."

She said West Carroll plans to operate the incentive program again this coming school year.

Katzenberger also noted the contributions made by the students themselves.

"I really think the kids themselves helped push the project," she said. "I definitely think that in the next year we will go up another percentage point or two and reach state average if we continue with our efforts and with the community's support. We all need to work to keep all our students excited about school. They need to know that education is the key to achieving their dreams."

Working with root causes

Joyce Crouse is a Truancy Specialist working in Carroll County with the Truants' Alternative Program (TAP) through the Regional Office of Education. TAP provides preventative and remedial services to keep students from becoming chronic truants and offers an educational option for students who had dropped out or who were at risk of dropping out of school due to academic deficiencies.

"One of the good things about my position is that as I can have families trust me enough to share some of their problems I can connect them with other agencies that can help," Crouse said.

The agencies that she uses to help her clients sometimes provide medical assistance, financial aid, tutoring, food, even housing. She was quick to add that a TAP client does not have to be truant to benefit from the program.

"When folks hear my title they think, Oh dear, I'm in terrible trouble, but some of our families have had a great deal of sickness and need to be connected with a tutor or something like that," she

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