This week, our public schools will be opening their doors to educate our youth. I hope everyone gets off to a good start. Since truancy is an issue that comes up every year, I’d like to share what Hawai‘i law
This week, our public schools will be opening their doors to educate our youth. I hope everyone gets off to a good start. Since truancy is an issue that comes up every year, I’d like to share what Hawai‘i law says about it and also give some ideas for how to help our kids get the education they need to succeed.
Hawai‘i Revised Statute 571-11 (2-C) states that the court shall have jurisdiction (the official power to make legal decisions and judgments) over a juvenile “who is neither attending school nor receiving educational services required by law whether through the child’s own misbehavior or nonattendance.”
That translates that if a child is expected to be in a class, and doesn’t attend, he/she is interfering with his/her education, and has broken the law, and the court can make a decision about what to do about it.
These are the legal exceptions:
• The child is physically or mentally unable to attend school. This needs a doctor’s note.
• The child is 15 or over, suitably employed, and has been excused by the superintendent, his representative or by a family court judge. The employer must notify the school within three days upon termination of the child’s employment.
• The child has graduated from high school.
• The child is enrolled in an appropriate alternative educational program as approved by the superintendent or his/her representative.
• The child is home schooled, and that intent has been submitted to the principal of the public school that the child would otherwise be attending.
• The child is 16 years old.
• The principal has determined that the child has engaged in disruptive behavior to other students, teachers or staff.
• The principal, a teacher or counselor, and an adult having legal responsibility for the child develop an alternative educational plan.
One of the reasons that it is a law to stay in school is that truancy is a gateway to later crime. The Honorable Judge Bruce Newman wrote an article stating:
“Students who become truant and eventually drop out of school, set themselves up for a life of struggle by putting themselves at a long-term disadvantage. High school dropouts, for example, are two-and-a-half times more likely to be on welfare than high school graduates. … In addition, high school dropouts who were employed earned much lower salaries. When kids skip school, they tend to get into trouble. More that 82 percent of prisoners today are school dropouts.”
In Kaua‘i high schools, students are informed at freshman orientation that cutting classes is against the law.
In the past some interpreted the law to mean that students wouldn’t get busted for truancy if they were on school grounds.
However, the law states that a child “can’t interfere with his education.” Not attending his/her scheduled classes interferes with a student’s education, so technically students are truant even if they are on the school grounds, but not in their classes.
This is where a village can help a child. Friends and school staff, if you see students during school hours not in their correct classes, please encourage them to return to those classes. Learning builds on previous learning. If a student misses classes, they won’t know what they need to know to continue with higher learning and will get behind. If you truly want to help them, help them get to their classes and stay in school. High school graduates earn over $8,000 more per year than dropouts. With 50 years of working, that costs your friends at least $400,000! (Clemson Truancy Reduction Study, 2005).
And students, if you are having difficulty with a class, don’t quit! Get help. Ask your teacher to explain the subject in another way or tell you how you can get some tutoring.
Schools offer tutoring programs for free. Take advantage of them. Sometimes it’s just one tiny thing that you missed, and when you get that, you zoom forward.
The other side of that is that some kids get bored in high school. Well, if you keep your grades up, you can attend Kaua‘i Community College for one credit a semester in your junior year and get both high school and college credit for it. In your senior year, you can take two.
You need to be able to read, write and do math to make good choices for yourselves. You need to be able to express yourself well, so that others will know what your want or what you are thinking. Your family works to care for you by having jobs to go to. It is your job to go to school to prepare yourself to be able to work and create a life so that you can care for yourself and your loved ones.
Hopefully your parents know that it is their responsibility to help you get your education. In fact, if a student is truant for more that 20 days, parents can be charged with educational neglect. So help each other out, and stay in school. Some parents think that they can save money by using their teens as baby sitters during school hours while they work.
However, if they were going to do that, they would have to pay to home school the student.
Clive Belfield, professor of economics at Queens College, City University of New York, estimates that the cost for parents who home school, who keep a careful accounting is about $2,500 for a family’s first child and slightly less for the next one or two home-schooled kids. Also, there are many social lessons learned in a group high school setting that aren’t learned with a computer or class of five or less. Remember, a higher emotional IQ correlates with better success than just an intellectual IQ.
Parents should ask around for other options, such as sharing child care among working parents, Head Start programs for pre-schoolers, church supported programs, etc. This is a loving island, and there is much aloha here for keiki. We want teens and babies to succeed.
If there is a problem paying for all the school materials, let your school know. There are some grants to help with the finances there.
Probably the most effective people to help kids stay in school are their peers. Encourage your classmates to come to school. There are three “A’s” that are important in a student’s experience that make them want to stay in school:
• Attendance: Students who lag in attendance often drop out because they become overwhelmed by what they’ve lost and can’t catch up. Show up! Do your best! Get help as soon as you feel you don’t understand something. Trust that school staff wants you to succeed.
• Attachment: There has got to be something at school that kids feel bonded to. It can be peers (often a boyfriend or girlfriend), teachers or other staff, a specific class and desire to learn something, a team or club after school, etc. High school offers a once in a lifetime free chance to experiment and find out what you are good in and what makes you happy in lots of different areas. Try different things. Get to know your guidance counselor, and get to know yourself.
• Achievement: We all want to succeed. We want to know that we’ve learned something when our efforts are over. Behaviorists have learned that people will keep doing things when they get a reward for it. So teachers, friends, staff: When you see someone do something great, or make improvements, praise it. And remember that failure often leads to success the next time. It isn’t an end. It is supposed to show you what you need to do next to succeed. Experiments fail all the time, but scientists don’t consider them failures. They learn what didn’t work.
A democracy needs competent, educated people to make decisions for it. That is why education became free.
Take advantage of it while you can. There is really no other place that offers so many different things for you to learn. After college, you pay!
Good luck in school. May you build the you that you really want to be.
