You're in the Dropping Out section

Fresno Unified fails to track a flood of habitual truants

By Tracey Scharmann - Special to The Bee

Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011 | 10:00 PM

tool name

close
tool goes here
0 comments

Powell concedes that the truancy tracking and intervention system is broken. "Fewer people are employed to run down kids that are absent," he said. "Are we doing what we need to do? No. Then you add in dysfunctional families and a dysfunctional funding system, and it makes it much more difficult to address these issues."

Powell said he will now make sure that local school districts file annual SARB reports. "We need to start tracking these students," he said.

In the early 2000s, the Fresno Police Department, with the help of an outside grant, hired two full-time "juvenile accountability" officers to pick up truants daily, said Chief Jerry Dyer. But when the grant ended, so did the program. "We turned over truancy efforts to Fresno Unified," Dyer said.

In 2008, Fresno Unified dropped out of the county's Truancy Intervention Program, presumably to cut the $120,000 annual costs. It is unclear what special programs, if any, the school district is now using to address the truancy and dropout problem.

Fresno Unified points to a dramatic improvement in its overall truancy rate over the past five years, dropping from 50% in 2005 to 35% today.

But state education officials say the district's official rate fails to capture the true extent of the truancy problem.

Take Fresno High School, for example. Even though more than 66% of the student body qualified as habitual truants last year, when it came time for the school district to report the official truancy rate at Fresno High, it reported the rate at 31%.

"The truancy rates from districts are inaccurate numbers," Kopperud said. "They mask what's really going on at grade level with chronic absences."


Similar stories:

  • Area 5 is Fresno Unified's most hotly contested race

  • Fresno Unified incumbent Ryan faces four challengers in Area 6

  • Parents air concerns at FUSD town hall

  • More continuation schools

  • Fresno looks at program to aid students, defuse powder-keg schools

The Bee's story-comment system is provided by Disqus. To read more about it, see our Disqus FAQ page. If you post comments, please be respectful of other readers. Your comments may be removed and you may be blocked from commenting if you violate our terms of service. Comments flagged by the system as potentially abusive will not appear until approved by a moderator.

more videos »
Visit our video index