Students in Kentucky to Face Misdemeanor Charges for Truancy

By Kris Coombs, Christian Post Contributor Friday, January 06, 2012

A new Covington, Ky., ordinance, enacted on January 2, allows police to arrest students for missing school.

Ken Kippenbrock, Director of Pupil Personnel for the Covington school district and the driving force behind the new ordinance, says it is in the best interest of the society that police get involved.

"If you have a recurring problem with a student this is the way to get this family in front of the judge," Ken Kippenbrock, Director of Pupil Personnel for the Covington school district tells Yahoo’s Shine. "We're trying to increase the likelihood that child is going to graduate; we know the cost to society when a child drops out."

Earlier this week, Covington police were given information on the times students should be in school, their dismissal times, and procedures they must follow when they discover a child not in school during common hours. If Covington police catch students they suspect are skipping school, they may now make an arrest on misdemeanor charges at their discretion.

Furthermore, if the students’ parents are the cohorts of their cutting children, they could also face a court date.

Officers have the option to return the child to school or to their parents' home. If the child’s parents can't be reached and he/she is not allowed back in school, they can be booked.

"Most officers I know are likely to give a warning at first, but if they have a child repeatedly deliberately violating school rules they can use their discretion," Kippenbrock told Shine.

According to Kippenbrock, truancy is a problem for school districts educationally and financially.

Last year, the district, which contains 4,000 students from kindergarten to grade 12, had approximately 13,500 unexcused absences, Kippenbrock told The Christian Post. The lack of attendance negatively affects state funding, which is based on attendance.

According to Kippenbrock, the district lost $500,000 last year because of the poor attendance record, Shine reported.

Kippenbrock added that he hopes enforcing a citywide "daytime curfew" will make kids and parents take skipping school more seriously.

When did parents become so self-involved that they’ve neglected to notice their children’s rate of absence in school? So neglectful, in fact, that police officials have to resort to criminal charges. And even worse, how can a parent be a cohort in a child skipping school without reasonable explanation?

“Often, parents don’t realize they’re children weren’t in school,” Kippenbrock told The Christian Post. He supports parental responsibility but cites the undeniable “correlation between truancy and drop-outs,” as a reason for the necessary ordinance.

“We always encourage parents to do whatever they can to get their children to school when they’re not sick. Parents are only referred to family court when they are not responsive,” Kippenbrock told The Christian Post.

But what has the local public reaction been to the new ordinance?

Kippenbrock told The Christian Post the ordinance has received “overwhelming support” and “very little pushback” from the community, except for from parents of children that are homeschooled, for which the ordinance does not pertain to anyway. Locals, city police and the county sheriff have all endorsed the new ordinance, Kippenbrock told The Christian Post.

Is such an extreme measure really necessary for today’s youth? And more importantly, can it work?

"It's hard to know," says Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, to Shine. "This approach has been tried at different times and at different parts of the country and it's generally been abandoned, because parents raise a stink and politicians back down."

Kippenbrock also admits to The Christian Post that he “cannot say yet” whether or not the ordinance will help the city, but the neighboring Newport town has used a similar ordinance for the past decade and has seen a lower rate of truancy.

“We think we can do better with this ordinance,” Kippenbrock told The Christian Post .

A similar policy will be enacted this week in Belen, New Mexico, according to Shine. The plan will seek to prosecute parents whose children have a repetitive record of truancy. Belen parents could face fines or possible imprisonment if their child’s attendance record does not improve.

Kippenbrock told The Christian Post that 90 percent of children in his Covington, Kentucky district live at or beneath the poverty line, with 15 percent actually being homeless. He says the district also has issues with violence, although people may see Kentucky as a quiet “rural place.”

"What I found over the years is kids being kept home to babysit their siblings when their parents go to work," Kippenbrock told Shine.

More night and weekend classes for students with difficult schedules and home lives could also help Covington, but they are improbable, Jennings told Shine.

"We're at a time when public schools are in their second or third years of cutbacks and school districts don't have a lot of money," he said. "It would be nice if schools offered more flexible schedules for students, but doesn't seem to be in the cards."

President Steve Angelucci of Lexington Catholic High School in Kentucky declined to comment, saying truancy was not an issue in his school.