Truancy: No easy answer
Editor’s note: This is the first part of a two-part series on truancy.
BROOKINGS – The 2021-22 school year was expected to be challenging – former Brookings superintendent and school board member Roger DeGroot predicted this in his farewell address during the August board meeting- but no one could have predicted the issues that have afflicted school districts across the state.
In Brookings, like other districts, truancy is on the rise.
Brookings Superintendent Klint Willert summarized the issue with the following statement, in a November interview with the Register: “Students pass the first threshold by entering the building but then refuse to go to class. Instead, they chose to wander the hallways or hang out in the parking lot.”
Truancy has long been an issue for school districts, but the current trend is troubling to administrators. Many are searching for reasons why, right now, truancy is becoming such an issue. Willert theorized that the COVID-plagued end to the 2020 school year and the remote option during the 2020-21 school year may be playing a significant role.
“If I left the school in March 2020 and I found myself disengaged and not having to show up or do things, and then I remote learned last year because I could, and there was limited engagement and flat out disengagement by the student, but now this year the remote option is taken away and now I have to be there, it’s pretty difficult to shed the pattern of behavior that’s been established over the past 15 to 18 months,” Willert said.
Students at Brookings High School have also become more defiant, contributing to the “changing culture” within the high school. Phrases like “make me,” which are not new to the schools, have recently become more common in the hallways and have characterized the defiant, non-compliant behavior. The defiance is significantly contributing to the challenge of teachers and administrators enforcing class attendance at the high school.
Juvenile justice reform
In the early 2000s/2010s, South Dakota had the second highest number of kids (per capita) in detention centers, according to former Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s State of the State speech in January 2015. Kids were placed in detention centers for things as serious as violent crimes including rape, burglary and murder, as well as nonviolent crimes such as drug abuse and truancy. According to Daugaard, in 2013, seven of every 10 youth committed to the Department of Corrections were for misdemeanor offenses, probation violations, and status offenses like underage drinking or truancy.
Lawmakers in the state saw this troubling statistic and decided to begin the process of reforming the juvenile justice system. In 2011, the Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative (JDAI) was implemented in Pennington and Minnehaha counties. According to the JDAI page on the state’s Unified Judicial System website, the mission statement for South Dakota JDAI is “to work collaboratively to promote a more effective and efficient juvenile justice system through the implementation of JDAI’s juvenile justice best practice standards in South Dakota.”
The key element of JDAI is to eliminate the contact that juveniles who commit nonviolent crime have with violent offenders.
In Pennington and Minnehaha counties, “both sites have achieved remarkable results, closely mirroring other successful jurisdictions nationwide,” the state judicial system reported. It was reported in 2018 that the number of youth committed to detention centers dropped by 65% since 2013. During that time period, felony arrests remained the same, “despite population increases.” Brookings County currently has that same JDAI program.
The success of JDAI in these two counties prompted lawmakers to address changes statewide. In 2015, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 73, the “Juvenile Justice Reform Act,” as it is commonly referred to, which caused sweeping changes in the state’s juvenile justice system.
“Those reforms (in Senate Bill 73) eliminated certain offenses from being Department of Corrections (DOC) referable,” Brookings County State’s Attorney Dan Nelson said. “Now in order to be a qualifying offense, in terms of going to the DOC, it has to be a violent felony. Anything under a violent felony is referred to as a non-qualifying offense, meaning that probation is the first option the court has to consider. If it is a non-qualifying offense, probation is what is ordered.”
Nelson says that when ordered, the term of probation was also lessened. The typical term now is between four to six months, Nelson said, but prior to the Juvenile Justice Act, it was longer. Truancy is considered a non-qualifying offense, which means that, according to Nelson, on your first and second offense (for truancy citation) it’s a $100 fine. Once the third offense for truancy occurs, the truant can be placed on probation, but by then “the school year is usually over” Nelson said.
Before the juvenile justice reform, truant offenders first went on probation, but if they were repeat offenders, the court system had the DOC at its disposal, Nelson said. With the 2015 reform, placing juveniles in detention centers for truancy was “taken off the table.”
Cost was also a significant reason why juvenile justice was reformed in South Dakota. According to Daugaard, when juveniles are placed in the DOC, the cost can range anywhere from $41,000 to $144,000 per year, depending on the program. The staggering cost to house juveniles away from their homes influenced reform in the state, allowing nonviolent offenders to return to their communities. Reform on the system would save millions, Daugaard said.
Compulsory attendance age
Another piece to this complex puzzle is the compulsory school attendance age in South Dakota. In 2009, the state moved to change the compulsory age for attendance from 16 to 18. That bill, Senate Bill 126, flew through the House and the Senate, stating that any person who has control of a child, between the ages of 6 and 18, “shall cause the child to regularly and annually attend some public or nonpublic school.”
At the time, bill sponsor Sen. Dave Knudson expressed that some schools in the state were concerned about having students who didn’t want to be there and could become disruptive.
Fast-forward to 2019: the South Dakota House Education Committee moved forward with House Bill 1232, which would lower the compulsory attendance age from 18 back down to 16.
Primary bill sponsor Rep. Lana Greenfield said the bill came forward after speaking to school administrators and principals in eastern South Dakota.
“We seemed to have added insult to injury and our schools have become holding tanks as a result of Senate Bill 73,” Greenfield said. “We’ve taken crime and destruction numbers out of our correctional facilities and have passed them on seemingly to our local schools and our local communities to handle.”
Greenfield added, “We continue to tie the hands of the schools by making mandates such as the mandatory attendance age of 18.”
A former principal and superintendent in the Huron School District, Terry Nebelsick spoke in favor of HB 1232, stating that it would seem that keeping kids in school until 18 made for better success. However, he found that the district had better success if students who did not want to be there dropped out, only to later return once they realized the value of a high school diploma. Nebelsick said they had much better success graduating these students in their alternative school once they returned.
Opponents of the bill argued that lowering the age would be a sign that “we are giving up” or turning their backs on these kids.
The bill narrowly passed the House Education Committee but died in the House of Representatives in a 40-27 vote.
Diversion programs
“Juvenile justice is a very challenging area of the law right now,” Nelson said. “We are trying to move away from incarcerating kids for not going to school. And we have.”
Nelson said that research and statistics show that when you incarcerate a truant juvenile, you are making the problem worse and not dealing with the issue.
“You’re not getting to the heart of why a kid is not going to school,” Nelson said.
Nelson explained that incarcerating a juvenile for not going to school is not effective – it actually perpetuates the problem. Nelson said that the Unified Judicial System (UJS) has found that when juveniles are exposed to other troubled juveniles in the Juvenile Detention Center (JDC) system, those “bad” characteristics are taken on.
“So when you have a juvenile who’s being incarcerated for truancy and he or she is spending time with another incarcerated juvenile who is in for first-degree burglary, you are mixing the truancy kid with the violent offender, and they obviously have different needs and different reasons why they are there,” Nelson said. “We don’t want the kid who’s simply there on truancy to learn those bad behaviors from the kid who was incarcerated.”
The UJS has collected data that shows that the example that Nelson gave is often times what happens in the JDC system.
“The judges, myself as state’s attorney, probation officers, what we’ve decided to do and what we believe is a more appropriate way to handle (truancy) is through the diversion programs,” Nelson said.
The diversion programs in Brookings are run through the Boys & Girls Club, in partnership with the State’s Attorney’s Office. Those programs include Teen Court, which was established in 2007, as well as newer programs such as the Brookings County Youth Diversion Program (BCYDP), which was established in fall 2020 for more serious nonviolent offenses, and the Brookings School Attendance Program, which was established in 2020. Data provided by the programs show that 62% of the youth who participated in the BCYDP were recommended for a mental health/chemical dependency evaluation.
Nelson wants to dispel the notion that the system has “gone soft” on kids now. He says that the old system “didn’t care about the ‘why,’ the only thing we cared about was the easy short-term answers.”
“The answer, short term was ‘I’m going to lock you up if you don’t go to school,’ but it never addressed the why,” Nelson said. “So what we are trying to do in these new programs is address the why, because that’s the long-term answer.”
This is not to say that juveniles are now immune from detention centers, Nelson says. Violent offenders, primarily, are still subject to the DOC. In Brookings County, 10 juveniles, since 2019, have been placed in the DOC.
To learn more about the Juvenile Justice Reform in South Dakota, visit jjri.sd.gov.
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Truancy: looking for solutions
Editor’s note: This is the second part of a two-part series on truancy.
BROOKINGS – In the early 2000s, South Dakota had the second highest number of kids in detention centers (per capita) in the United States. Most of those kids were placed in detention centers for non-violent crimes, such as drug use and truancy. Legislators in the state saw this troubling statistic and began reforming the juvenile justice system.
Known as the Juvenile Justice Reform Act, 2015’s Senate Bill 73 took juvenile detention centers (JDC) off the table for non-violent offenders. Instead, those kids would reform through diversion programs, remaining in their schools and communities rather than being shipped off to a distant detention facility.
In 2009, South Dakota legislators also raised the compulsory school attendance age from 16 to 18, with Senate Bill 126. Critics of the bill said that schools were not equipped to take on students who had no interest being there, explaining that resources for the school would be needed. Despite a push in 2019 to lower the age back to 16, the compulsory age of attendance remained at 18.
Fast-forward to 2021, during a pandemic, and school administrators, principals and teachers are faced with their “most challenging year ever.” Truancy, coupled with defiant, non-compliant behavior, is on the rise in districts across the state, including Brookings. Administrators are faced with a question: What do we do to reverse the trend?
Current situation
The effects of both Senate Bill 73 and Senate Bill 126, both good and bad, are being seen in school districts across the state. Some students at Brookings High School are entering the building but refusing to go to class, instead spending their time in the hallways or parking lot. These students, despite being on school grounds, are still considered truant.
Brookings High School Resource Officer Josh Schneider, with the Brookings Police Department, says “there are several groups” that walk around the hallways during the day until they are found and told to go back to class. Other times, they will get excused for a bathroom break and then “just not go back to class,” Schneider said, explaining that a “select few” have the non-compliant type attitude. The grade levels for these students range anywhere from freshman to seniors.
Why do these students, who wander the hallways instead of going to class, bother coming to school, if they are still considered truant?
“That’s a good question,” Schneider said. “I don’t know if it’s more their social time, because all their friends are here, so they just use it to socialize. It sounds crazy because they are in school, so they should be in class.”
Schneider thinks, from the experiences that he has with his own kids, the 90-minute class periods make it hard for kids to sit still for that long.
“They just ask to go to the bathroom, and they’ll be out for 20 minutes walking around, and the teacher’s got 30 other kids in the classroom. They can’t focus on the one that went to the bathroom,” Schneider said. “I think that’s a big component of it.”
According to the BHS Student Handbook, students are allowed 10 unexcused absences per semester. After seven unexcused absences in one or more classes per semester, school personnel will send a letter to the parent or guardian. After 10 unexcused absences in one or more classes per semester, students are considered “excessively absent and a letter will be sent to parent/guardian.”
Attendance program
The Brookings School Attendance Program, a diversion program of the Boys & Girls Club, was started in conjunction with the school district so that there would be direct referrals for truancy, taking out the State’s Attorney’s Office, according to Youth Diversion Director Karlee Chapin.
“It’s really trying to prevent them from getting that far and getting referrals to (the State’s Attorney’s Office),” Chapin said. “Ultimately, my goal with that program is that we catch them soon enough and are able to put in some place the resources they need in order to get them to go to school before it becomes a habit.”
The Brookings School Attendance Program works on a three-tier system. The first tier occurs when a student is referred to the program with “excessive absences.” Excessive absences are considered after 20 total unexcused hours or five unexcused hours for one course or 40 hours of excused absences not including those due to COVID-19. The family will receive a letter, and the student will have a meeting with a parent/guardian, school administration, and Boys & Girls Club personnel. As of late Oct., 14 students have been referred to this program. In 2020, there were eight referred.
Tier 2 occurs when “excessive absences persist” and will then require a weekly check-in. Another meeting will occur, this time with a school resource officer, along with the other previously mentioned parties. Tier 2 occurs when there has been 40 total unexcused hours or 10 unexcused hours for one course or 80 hours of excused absences not including those due to COVID-19.
Tier 3 goes into effect when tier 1 and tier 2 “interventions are not being followed.” The student is then refereed to the Teen Court for truancy.
Teen Court “gives first-time, non-violent offenders the opportunity to admit wrongdoing.” High school-aged juveniles charged with offenses such as underage consumption, truancy, shoplifting and injury to property, among other misdemeanor charges, are “sentenced” by a jury of their peers. All Teen Court youth complete a mental health screening, which takes place during their intake. Youth can only participate in Teen Court if they have admitted guilt and it’s their first offense.
As of late October, there have been 20 referred to the Teen Court program. In 2020, there were 41 referred. According to Chapin, some of the “sentences” include community service hours or community action points (CAP), which include activities related to academics, character and citizenship and healthy lifestyles.
Brookings County State’s Attorney Dan Nelson said that the Teen Court programming for truancy is different than for some other citations, like underage drinking.
For the truancy programming in Teen Court, those in the program are required to spend a set amount of time at the Boys & Girls Club working on homework. The Boys & Girls Club will also sometimes have people present to help with homework. When that happens, those in the program must be present.
“With the truancy kids, too, I sometimes try to show up at school randomly to check in with them,” Chapin said. “That’s an added supervision to them to make sure they are in school.”
According to Nelson, if offenders are unsuccessful in the Teen Court program, they are referred back to the court system, where they have to explain to the judge why they were unsuccessful in Teen Court and then proceed in the court “as if they hadn’t been referred to the diversion program.”
Nelson said “not many” are unsuccessful in the program. For truant offenders entering the court system on a first offense, the fine is $100. The second offense is another $100 fine with the third offense being a probation sentence.
BHS answers
Brookings School District Superintendent Klint Willert explained that the district has lost “some of the tools in our toolbox that we had years ago.”
“Prior (to the juvenile justice reform), when you had very significant issues with truancy, pretty significant issues with some of these behaviors, there may have been alternative placements for some of the individuals who wouldn’t adhere to the expectations in the school,” Willert said.
The compulsory attendance age of 18, coupled with the “What are you going to do about it? You can’t make me” attitude, shifted a burden onto school districts without the corresponding resources to support the schools, Willert said.
“There were all these resources that existed prior to the changes in juvenile justice, that were in that system, that subset of students that found themselves in that environment were shifted back to the school district,” Willert said, explaining that school did not receive any funding or resources to hire a new employee, a single program, or designated effort “to address that shift.”
Willert said there was never any resources or necessary support given to local school districts when the change in juvenile justice occurred. Instead, Willert said, the Brookings School District became very active in seeking a partnership with Brookings Behavioral Health and Wellness.
“We established that partnership. That was an intentional effort to say, ‘We need school-based mental health services with a community partner,’” Willert said. “To help coordinate what we are trying to do. But that’s only a small sliver of a bigger solution.”
In response to the increase in truancy referrals, the Brookings School District is in the process of starting an “alternative option” for students “who may not be finding success” at the high school. The alternative option, discussed at the Nov. 8 school board meeting, would be a “supported, online environment” that will be funded through federal ESSER (COVID-19 relief) dollars.
Before the start of the pandemic in early 2020, an alternative school was discussed by administrators at the high school, with the proposed location being the Career & Technical Education Center Building on the south side of the south parking lot at the high school. Due to the pandemic, the idea was tabled.
Two certified teachers will be hired to lead the alternative option. The location for this alternative option is still to be decided but the tentative plan is to start the alternative option in January, at the start of the new semester.
The district also hired two mental health counselors, utilizing the COVID dollars, which has “really been a true benefit,” Willert said.
Further, the district is hiring what Willert calls “success coordinators.”
“The goal is, with those success coordinators identified for the high school, they would provide an online platform that is supported with them directly,” Willert said. “To assist those students who might be struggling academically or who might be disengaged and wandering the halls, where it’s better for you to be engaged in this environment than nothing at all.”
The district is currently advertising for student success interventionists on the district’s employment page. To be eligible, the person applying must be a certified teacher. The position will be funded through the ESSER dollars.
“I applaud what the high school is doing with the success coordinators and working on an alternative option,” Willert said. “It can be online so if you don’t want to be here, that’s fine, you can leave, but you are still going to be held academically accountable for these courses that you are going to take online. Parents, you know what you are signing up for when your child is in these. You own it as much as they do. If they aren’t showing up, if they aren’t participating, we are going to follow up with the State’s Attorney, we are going to be involved with truancy and diversion programs and exercise those options that we have.”
To learn more about the Juvenile Justice Reform in South Dakota, visit the following site: jjri.sd.gov.
Contact Addison DeHaven at adehaven@brookingsregister.com.