They call it
”
The Big Meeting
”
for a reason.
Hollister – They call it “The Big Meeting” for a reason.
The San Benito County District Attorney’s Office, in conjunction with the Hollister School District, has invited about 400 families of children considered at risk for truancy to attend the first ever big meeting on Friday.
The meeting will inform parents of truancy laws and keep more kids in the classroom this school year, said District Attorney John Sarsfield.
Letters were sent out to parents notifying them that they had been identified as parents of at-risk students, which are students who had 10 or more unexcused absences last school year, and encouraged them to attend the meeting to become more informed about truancy problems, Sarsfield said.
“The whole idea is, No. 1 to get kids educated, and No. 2 to avoid difficulties down the road,” Sarsfield said. “Studies show that areas that have relatively high truancy rates have increased juvenile crime rates. We’re trying to keep that at a minimum.”
The Hollister School District has a 7 percent truancy level for its approximately 6,000 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, said Connie Childers, the at-risk advocate for the school district.
“We’re trying to change the attitude of attending school,” Childers said.
“Attendance is the No. 1 factor for school success. It also sets the attitude for people’s work ethic when they grow up.”
Only an illness or doctor’s visit are considered excused absences – anything else, including family emergencies, are up to the principal’s discretion to decide if they’re excusable or not, Childers said.
The idea of the big meeting was taken from Monterey County, which has been successful in abating truancy by educating parents about their obligations as defined by state law, said Deputy District Attorney Denny Wei.
The Education Code states if a child has three or more unexcused absences the parents can be held liable, Wei said.
The District Attorney’s Office has charged approximately 10 parents with education code violations over the past two years, all of them resulting in fines, Wei said. They were charged after multiple attempts at mediation failed or were ignored by the parents, he said.
“This is an attempt to prevent truancy at an early stage without having to mediate,” Wei said.
The fines can range from $100 for the first offense, $200 for the second and $500 for the third, Sarsfield said.
If a parent is fined and still fails to comply with the code, a misdemeanor charge of child neglect could be pursued, he said. The San Benito County District Attorney’s Office has not pressed misdemeanor charges against anyone yet.
“It’s something we would do very reluctantly, but it has been done in district attorney’s offices in the past,” Sarsfield said. “The problem is that some parents just don’t care. We want to identify them and make them understand their obligation, and if it doesn’t turn around, we will take enforcement if we have to.”
The District Attorney’s Office has no plans to coordinate its truancy program with other schools at this time, Wei said.
“But if (other schools) want to adopt the big meeting system, we’d be happy to do that,” he said.
The big meeting will be held at the Rancho San Justo Middle School gymnasium at 9am on Friday. Wei doesn’t expect that all the parents who received letters inviting them to the meeting will attend, but is expecting at least half of them to show up, he said.
Any parent of a child in the Hollister School District who did not receive an invitation and would like to attend anyway is welcome, Wei said.
“It will be an informative meeting, where they can be informed of the laws and how to work with the school,” he said.
Rancho San Justo Middle School is located at 1201 Rancho Dr. in Hollister.
