"I put that money in last year’s budget to put a truancy program in place," Chavous said. "I don’t know where it went. I don’t have a lot of confidence that they used the money the way it should have been used."

A recent report from D.C. Action for Children, a nonprofit advocacy group, also finds that "little has happened" in the area of truancy prevention since a similar hearing more than a year ago.

In fact, Chavous said, administrators reduced the number of "attendance centers" to deal with truants from four to one during the last year.

Meanwhile, documented cases of truancy increased 45 percent between academic year 1995-96 and 1996-97, according to Action for Children. More than 1,000 students were picked up by police officers for truancy during the last school year, the report said.

"Until the District’s public school system can fix the current system and establish a clear and consistently implemented process to identify them and work with students at risk of truancy and engaged in truancy, students will continue to suffer from poor education and experience failure," the Action for Children report said.

"Right now, 50 percent of students that enter school don’t graduate," Chavous said in an interview after the hearing. "At the same time we have high unemployment and escalating juvenile crime. It all inter-relates. It’s major problem that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention."

But judging from attendance at the hearing, Chavous’ colleagues on city council don’t share his concern. None of them showed up at the hearing.

Chavous also faulted current truancy prevention efforts for focusing too closely on high school students at the expense of elementary school aged children.

Currently, police officers who find children out of school during school hours take them to a central "attendance center" where they are evaluated by counselors.

"Those centers promote a focus on the older children," Chavous said. "Those patterns have already been set. We need a renewed focus on younger children."

Deputy DCPS Superintendent Elois Brooks said the schools are working with various agencies on the issue. The most obvious change on the horizon is a plan for secondary school teachers to take attendance in every class every day beginning in January. Currently attendance is taken only once a day.

The new attendance procedure is part of a multi-agency truancy prevention program set to begin in January that includes a media campaign of public service announcements, letters reminding parents that they can be charged with a misdemeanor if their children are found to be truant, and letters reminding businesses to report children seen loitering during school hours. The program is a joint effort by D.C. Public Schools, the Metropolitan Police Department and the District’s social service agencies.

School officials said truant students can be reported to the school system by calling (202) 576-6985.

Brooks also testified that the school district has encountered problems notifying parents within 24 hours, as required, when their children are absent from school. She blamed the problems on the lack of touch-tone telephones at many schools, which she said prevents the use of an automated system to call parents.

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator