But she also questions the neglect of the school system. As Junior ditched classes and bounced from high school to continuation school -- one more Hispanic dropout in the making -- Fresno Unified failed for nearly two years to notify Ruiz that her son was a habitual truant or intervene with any dropout prevention programs, district records show.

Even though Junior continued to miss school for no valid reason, the district did not refer him to the School Attendance Review Board, records show. That would have required Junior and his mother to meet with representatives from the school, the superintendent's office, law enforcement, probation, and health and welfare to come up with a plan to avert his dropping out.

Such a referral is considered standard in cases of habitual truancy like Junior's, state education officials say.

At the time of his death, records show, Junior had earned only half the credits he needed to graduate, and his cumulative GPA fell to 1.54. And yet he was passed from the ninth grade to the 10th grade to the 11th grade and placed on the same college-bound track as the district's top performers.

He and his mother met with a counselor only twice at Sunnyside High, records show. Both meetings were mandated by state law to discuss Junior's progress toward college. As he fell further behind, his student behavior report makes no mention of the school taking any steps, beyond the basic minimum, to assist him. At no time, Ruiz said, did a counselor offer vocational or career technical education as an alternative path.

It was as if Fresno Unified saw him only as a number, she said, a number that generated money from the state as long as her son was officially enrolled. It did not matter to the school district that Junior was home all day and actually wired to his PlayStation.

"It was like Junior wasn't real to them," she said.

Fresno Unified, citing student privacy laws, declined to answer questions about the educational struggles of Junior Villarreal. The district did agree to release his school records after his mother, on behalf of The Bee, made three formal in-person requests. Even so, his records were not complete, missing an entire year of absences.

In an attempt to learn why Fresno Unified failed for nearly two years to classify Junior as a habitual truant, notify his mother, refer them to the attendance review board -- SARB -- and provide more intensive intervention, several emails were sent to Superintendent Michael Hanson detailing questions and requesting an interview. Hanson declined to comment both about the Villarreal case in particular and the overall problem of high truancy and dropout rates in the district.

But interviews with dozens of current and former teachers, principals, guidance counselors, security staff, education experts, community activists, parents and students -- and public documents kept private by Fresno Unified for months but finally obtained through individual school sources -- mark a disquieting truth:

Junior Villarreal was hardly alone.

Teachers, administrators and security staff at high schools and middle schools across Fresno Unified describe an educational system hobbled by major breakdowns in student attendance, grades and discipline. Each year, they say, thousands of high school students with high absences and low credits are falling through the considerable cracks of a school district overwhelmed by the depths of poverty and pathology it meets every day.

The problems, they say, are most acute among Hispanic and African-American students and Hmong boys.