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Asking the questions
Truancy court helps kids make choices
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FarkThe school bell rang. A handful of students sat outside a classroom door on a recent Wednesday afternoon, waiting.
Truancy court at Central High School was now in session.
Once inside the “courtroom,” students answered question after question from 7th Circuit Judge Merton Tice.
What’s the most important thing in your life right now? What will happen if you don’t get a diploma? Why is it worth working hard in a class you probably will fail?
“The choices they make now will permanently affect their choices in the future,” Tice said in an interview. “If they don’t get a diploma, there will be jobs, opportunities and positions they won’t be able to get.”
Truancy court, a collaboration among school administrators, the state’s attorney office and 7th Circuit judges, has been reaching out to Central students for four years.
The goal of all the questions and truancy court is simple — to encourage truant students to take ownership of their education and to keep them out of the formal juvenile justice system.
“If we can touch that one student, we’ve already made a difference,” said Pratt Anspach, truancy court coordinator for Pennington County’s Juvenile Diversion program. “That’s what we consider success. It’s just one student at a time.”
About 20 to 25 Central students go through truancy court every school year, Anspach said, with participation in the voluntary program picking up in January.
Most participants are freshmen and sophomores younger than 16, the current age at which South Dakota students can drop out, Anspach said. That could change, though, when a state law goes into effect in July that holds parents responsible if their children do not attend school until they are 18 or graduate.
Students who have missed one to five days of school, or even as many as five to 10, are considered for truancy court, Anspach said, after the school finishes its own outreach process.
If the student agrees to participate, the student, parents, Anspach, Tice and assistant principal Mike Murphey draw up a contract together to address his or her specific problems.
“We don’t ask them to do anything,” Anspach said. “They are part of the solution and the decision-making.”
To check on students’ progress, the team tries to meet with them at least every other week — and more or less depending on how chronic the students’ absences are, Anspach said. The length of the program is six months.
“Every kid can be saved. Every kid can succeed,” Anspach said. “We just have to find the right angle that’s going to be able to reach out to them.”
The goal often isn’t for the student to get straight A’s or even to graduate, but rather to have them realize the value of a high school education, Tice said.
“Going to school alone isn’t an accomplishment,” Tice said. “It’s the education that’s important. If we don’t encourage children to want to get an education, all the hot air in the world won’t change that.”
The program is voluntary, and Tice has no judicial authority in his role. The only punishment the team can dole out is referring a student back to formal juvenile court if the student won’t participate, Anspach said.
“If a child comes up with a process that he offers for his education, there’s a far greater chance that it will become a part of his direction than if someone else tells him what he should do,” Tice said. “The child has a choice to do or not to do things.”
Come January, the face of truancy court will be a little different.
Tice, who has been with the program since its inception, is rotating to the formal juvenile court assignment and will give up his role due to the possible conflict of interest. Judge Janine Kern will take over truancy court.
Tice said he hopes the lessons he’s learned at the helm of truancy court will help him in his new assignment.
Still, he’s sad to leave a program he said is the most important effort he’s ever engaged in.
“I will miss very much the opportunity to get to know the kids and talk to the kids and their parents to communicate how important they are,” Tice said. “They aren’t just a number running through the court process.”
Contact Emilie Rusch at 394-8453 or emilie.rusch@rapidcityjournal.com.
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