Posted on 06/12/2013 7:25:01 AM PDT by Altariel
Reuters) - Several students from northeast Texas said they plan to file a federal complaint on Wednesday accusing their school districts of cruel and unusual punishment by prosecuting them in criminal court for missing school or being late for class.
The civil rights complaint, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, is directed at school districts in Dallas and three other communities.
The districts funnel truancy cases to a special court system that prosecuted more than 36,000 cases and collected $2.9 million in fines last year from students convicted of multiple unexcused absences or tardy arrivals, according to the complaint.
Students as young as 12 can be arrested and handcuffed at school. Once they turn 17, they can be jailed for failing to pay past fines, which can run into thousands of dollars, according to the complaint, which was drafted by the National Center for Youth Law and advocacy groups Texas Appleseed and Disability Rights Texas.
"I'm getting treated like a criminal," Ashley Brown, 16, one of the complainants, told Reuters late on Monday. She said she had been erroneously sent to truancy court for four excused absences after her grandmother's death.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Ferris Bueller
we lived in South Texas and my daughter has asthma...she missed 3 or 4 days of school as of January one year in 3rd grade and we received a letter informing us that if she missed any more school we could be taken to court. A physician’s note is required for every day of every absence. There are many days when children are sick enough to stay home but not sick enough to need to see an MD. The schools in Texas do not trust parents to know when to let their kids stay home from school and it is all tied to school funding. It is outrageous. Incidentally my daughter has always been an A student.
And so it begins.... The destruction of Texan policies by the whinyass carpetbagger leftists from the commie states they ran like cowards from. Go back to kommifornia or new yuck commie pig carpetbaggers.
I'll second that!
“and collected $2.9 million in fines last year”
This is about collecting revenue, not about the children.
Exactly, it’s about making sure the government gets more revenue, not about the student-—or about honoring the parent’s judgement.
Yeah, we've got to get the money of get after clear juvenile delinquents like her!
Government schools are prisons for children.
Add this to the reasons to home school children.
Yes, it’s all about the $. School funding is based on average daily attendance. Reports are filed in Austin every twenty school days.
The courts get their take and the school gets half. I remember years ago a woman was complaining that her son was being beat up several times a year by some thug in the school and when he retaliated, he was also arrested and sent to some kangaroo court where he was fined, something like $400. The school didn’t stop the bully from beating him up. Why should they? The kid was a patsy. I told the mother that the school was using her kid to make money off of him and she should really consider her options.
The Texas Education Code specifies that “ten or more” UNEXCUSED absences in a semester is in violation of the compulsory attendance statutes. This writer’s intuition is that the narrative in the story is BS. For a kid to go to court the DA has to find a violation of law and the TEC specifies those conditions, so under 10+ unexcused there’s no violation of law. Getting an absence excused is easy: a parent / guardian note within three days of the absence does it. If A kid is under the “must have a doctor’s note” condition he / she is a serial offender. One mom I knew stole a pad of excuses from a doc and was writing them herself. The benefits to a strict attendance policy: more kids in school; reduced daylight juvenile crime; fewer ignorant people in society.
....more revenue for The State.
$2.9 million.
It’s a lucrative business.
First, the money doesn’t go to the state but to the local courts like all other fines since the cases are most often heard at the JP level. Second, I was the attendance officer in a 5A high school and an AP so I’m familiar with how it works. Most of the chronic truancy is at the elementary level because momma’s to lazy to get the kid to the bus so she gets them to school by 10 AM thinking that counts. It doesn’t. Once we started joining forces with the local DA and JP the daytime crime rate dropped like a rock; the graduation rate started rising; test scores improved.
i wasn’t referring to “the state level” but to the government.
As I said, it’s all about the money.
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