Truancy is at a crisis point, but who should be responsible?

Editor’s note: Last week, reporter Alex Malm wrote about a grant secured by the United Way of Steele County that will fund a pilot program focused on addressing the root causes of truancy. Here, he takes a closer look at why truancy is such a difficult problem to solve.

Steele County Attorney Robert Jarrett knows the importance of students being in school.

While he knows it's not the only issue that leads to juvenile delinquency, he said truancy doesn’t help with public safety issues.

“There is a significant amount of juvenile delinquency that is serious criminal activity,” he said.

During the 2022-2023 school year, 445 out of 1,415 students at Owatonna High School missed more than seven days of school without an excuse. The same year, more than 100 students missed 20 days of school or more without an excuse.

Kids not showing up to school is an issue school districts across the county and state are facing.

But who should be responsible for getting kids to school? What approaches should be taken? Well, that’s up for debate, depending on who you ask.

Different Ages, Different Requirements

When students miss too many days of school without an excuse, referrals from the schools are made to the county’s social service agency.

In Steele, Dodge, and Waseca, that's MNPrairie.

MNPrairie County Alliance Program Manager for Child & Family Social Services Patricia Harrelson in an interview explained that, for students 12 and under, chronic absenteeism is considered “educational neglect.”

If a child is over 12, it’s educational neglect only if parents are at fault for the child being absent, and the absence harms the child.

In some cases, an educational neglect referral may become a child protection case or child welfare case for a different reason.

Harrelson doesn’t view cases of truancy as a primary social services issue.

“My job is to keep kids safe. Truancy is not something that is going to put a kid in a situation where they are [unsafe] all the time… those are not necessary issues I think our social work staff should be handling,” she said.

With limited resources, and a mandate to work for the most part with families that have children 12 and under, Harrelson said it's an approach they have taken at MNPrairie. She said in her view, it's important to get students wanting to go to school at a young age.

Harrelson also explained some of the students they meet are struggling in school. For example, some can’t read or write at grade level, which is why it's important to intervene when the students are younger.

“If I was a kid, and I had to go to school, and I couldn’t read or write, I don’t know if I would keep going,” she said.

But Harrelson argued there is a disconnect between her office and other officials across the county, including with the schools.

“This is a long-standing issue here,” Harrelson said.  “It's just been a struggle to get them to understand that we do deal with educational neglect regardless of the age.”

She explained that, by statute if a child is over 12, and it's not the parents’ fault, then it's not social services responsibility.

An example of when a case would be considered a child welfare or child protection services issue is if a parent told their child not to go to school to take care of younger siblings.

“It would elevate to us,” Harrelson said.

Return of Truancy Court?

Before the pandemic, officials helped combat truancy through what is known as truancy court.

But when the pandemic struck, decisions had to be made on what programs to eliminate, and Jarrett, who was not the County Attorney at the time, said truancy court was one of them.

“There were things that had to go away, and truancy court was one of them,” he said.

Jarrett explained after all other interventions were exhausted, a petition could be made to the court for a judge to address truancy with a child.

“Then you're hearing from a judge… kind of moving up the chain a little bit,” Jarrett said, explaining the judge could give some punishments for not going to school.

Jarrett said as with criminal cases, his office relies on investigations done by different agencies, and the only way to bring a case forward is through a referral.

Essentially, the schools are responsible for making referrals to MNPrairie for educational neglect. MNPrairie then reviews and decides about what course of action to take, including whether the county attorney should get involved.

In the past two years, not a single case for truancy was referred to his office, according to Jarrett.

In his opinion, MNPraire, which his office represents, isn’t doing enough.

“The disconnect is MNPrairie… they’re not addressing the issue,” he said.  “The county attorney office does not receive any referrals from MNPrairie regarding truancy.”

Jarrett also expressed his concerns during a recent interview with the Steele County Times about the number of kids missing school.

“I want kids to go to school,” he said.

Schools provide stability for kids, and truancy “certainly doesn’t help” with the level of criminal behavior taking place in the community.

“I have kids that are carrying guns, that are assaulting people with guns, knives,” Jarrett said.

As with any other case his office handles, Jarrett said, he has discretion over what truancy cases move forward. There just aren’t any to move.

“If I'm not even getting any of those, I can’t make any of those decisions,” he said.

Jarrett said his office is fully prepared to take on truancy court cases again, saying his office has the capacity to do so.

“It's not a staffing issue on our end,” Jarrett said.

Attendance Review Board

While there currently is no truancy court in Steele County, Jarrett said some schools use an Attendance Review Board (ARB), an optional program. The ARB’s goal is to work with school and other community officials, including county attorneys, to help get kids back to school.

“We sent an attorney to about 40 of them last year between Wilson and McKinley and Lincoln schools, and one at Washington,” he wrote in an email.

Some Owatonna school officials, though, think it's ineffective without more serious consequences.

Owatonna High School Assistant Principal Philip Wiken explained that, with the loss of truancy court, school officials felt there was no way to move past the ARB stage.

The high school still follows state statute when making truancy referrals to social services.

However, Wiken said the ARB program offers no further mechanism to force compliance.

“We did three years ago, but that was put on hold when COVID came,” Wiken wrote in a text message referring to the high school’s use of the Attendance Review Board. “ARB was the step that preceded a referral to truancy court. We had a few post-COVID, but with Truancy Court on hold, there wasn’t the ability to follow the progression as it existed in previous practice. We replaced it with our own process modeled on the ARB.”

Lack of Funding

One of the issues Harrelson pointed to is a lack of funding, along with questions over who should ultimately be responsible for students who simply won't go to school and whose parents don't meet the standard of educational neglect. With limited funding and having to meet certain requirements, she said, “They're not my highest priority in my job.”

Instead, she thinks multiple departments should be working together to tackle the issue.

“To me it's social services, corrections, the prosecutor's office all need to get together to work on it,” Harrelson said.

She explained her office would need a large increase in staff to handle truancy issues.

“The number of kids that just Owatonna High School had at one time, I would need 10 workers just to handle truancy, I don’t think it's a social services issue, I don’t know where it sits,” Harrelson said.

However, she thinks the state could help with funding in some areas. For example, last year Gov. Tim Walz signed into law legislation providing free meals to students, to the tune of approximately $93 million last year, according to Harrelson.

Instead, Harrelson thinks the funding should be distributed to pay for highly trained social workers to help with the truancy issue.

“I would rather see that money go to reducing truancy through the school,” Harrelson said. “Each school to me should have a worker or a regional worker.”