1. High School Truancy

2. What is Truancy?  Truancy is the first sign of trouble in a young person’s life.  When children start missing school this is a major sign to their parents, school officials, and the community that they are either in trouble or increasingly at risk of developing significant negative behaviors.

3. What causes truancy?  Truancy begins with feelings of boredom, dissatisfaction, and negative behavior.  Some students remain away from class due to the bullying from other students.

4. How many students are actually truant?  Each day there are thousands of students who are absent from school without a legitimate excuse.  Each year districts reinvent programs and policies to keep students in school.  Plans include strategies to decrease the number of truancies each day.

5.  Some local programs donated new cars to be raffled off at the end of the year to families with students who had perfect attendance.  However, nearly 15% of the city’s students were ineligible for the raffle after the first week of school.

6.  Our community leaders are determined to design ways to entice, counsel, threaten, or coerce children back into attending school.  Most of these programs are based on the assumption that the causes of truancy lie within the family.  Responsible school leaders are determined to make sure every student is in class and getting the education they deserve.

7.  Over 50,000 families in the U.K. have chosen to remove their children from school and provide home school educational plans for them.  One of the most common reasons was due to bullying and the schools refusal to do anything about it.  Other reasons: Religious and Political

8. Skipping Classes  Truancy is merely one symptom of many factors in a child’s life which prevent regular school attendance.  The short-term and long- term effects of truancy ripple throughout the family, the school, and the surrounding community.

9. How Does Truancy Effect Learning?  Studies have found that habitually truant students often struggle academically  They do not have friends who attend school regularly  They see no compelling reasons to attend or stay in school  Many have feelings of being socially isolated from the mainstream community

10. Does Truancy Lead To Delinquent Behavior?  Truancy can become the beginning of a lifetime of social and economics problems  These students start to academically fall behind in their classes

11.  Some, without assistance, will gradually transition to dropping out of school completely  Often, leaving school is easier than staying and catching up  Some researchers have concluded that truancy becomes one stepping stone on a path towards delinquent and criminal behavior

12.  Our community goal should be to prevent truancy and design systems to help students remain academically engaged in their home schools  One plan developed in Tustin “recovers” students found out of school and places them in an intervention location where their parents are notified and counseling is begun  This model can be a good plan when the assessments, interventions, and follow through are conducted by skilled and effective clinicians

13.  Teen truancy is on the rise all over the U.S.  Truancy is the responsibility of the school, parents, and the community

14.  Truant students are at a higher risk for behavior that involves drugs, alcohol, and violence.  Statistics show that many day time crimes are being reported because students are committing crimes instead of going to class.

15.  Today's students are our future  Truancy effects all of us  Educational budget planning needs to include a people and strategies to assist children to remain in school  These adolescents will be adults soon and it’s worth our investment in their future as much as it is in own best interest