Four months ago, Temple High School implemented a new policy that incorporated absenteeism with monetary consequences - a sort of ticketing system, where kids who ditched had to start paying up.
“It’s kind of like getting a traffic ticket,” Lisa Dise-rens, director of accountability and research for TISD, said.
Under the system, repeat offenders caught with 10 or more unexcused absences are charged a fine of $163 and issued a citation. Additional skipping after that just adds to the price tag. And if the fines go unpaid for too long, the students could face arrest warrants or other punishments - depending on their age.
So far, the system has worked. Fewer students are skipping school, and, according to the people counting heads, that was the whole point.
“As of today (Thursday), we’ve written 24 citations since the implementation of the policy,” Regina Baird, media coordinator for TISD, said. “When you consider that we’ve been doing this now for a couple of months, that’s not too bad. There has been a slight decrease in the number of attendance problems. And we’re also seeing fewer students leaving campus unauthorized.”
Ms. Diserens agreed.
“It’s still too early to give exact numbers or percentages with attendance,” she said. “But what we have definitely seen is that we have fewer students that are leaving the campus unauthorized. Fewer students have been caught skipping class than what we had before.”
Ms. Baird attributes the positive effect of the fine system to student word-of-mouth.
“I think it’s the kind of thing where a few kids receive the tickets and then go back and tell all their friends,” she said. “They’re coming back saying, ‘Dude, looks what’s happened.’ They’re verbalizing it to their peers. And then their peers are saying, ‘Hey, maybe I don’t need to leave campus right now.’ And that was the goal.”
Ms. Baird said, lately, attendance officers claim to be frequently asked by the students whether or not they’re going to be issued a citation.
“I think, hopefully, just hearing about others has become enough of a deterrent for the kids,” Ms. Baird said.
The money from the ticketed kids goes through the legal system the same way other citation fines would.
And, in fact, the only way the school profits financially off this new system is simply by keeping kids in school.
In the public school system, when students skip, schools lose money, because the amount of funding they are allotted by the state depends on the average attendance count.
“Of course, we’re concerned with the ADA (average daily attendance), because that’s what they use to determine our funding,” Ms. Baird said. “Attendance is a major issue for school districts. In the past, the funding was really more dependent on property taxes and things. But now, the schools are only getting funded for the X amount of kids that regularly show up to school, instead of being funded for every kid that’s enrolled.”
In spite of the attendance-based funding issue, Ms. Baird maintained that the primary impetus for the citation system is still just trying to get the kids to stay in class for their own good.
“Other than the funding, which, of course, we’re looking at,” Ms. Baird said. “Our big driving factor is that real high absenteeism can lead to dropouts. After X number of absences, these kids sometimes give up. They think they’ll never catch up in class, because they’re too behind and they’ve missed too much. We want to prevent that from happening. We want to keep the kids in class.”
Ms. Diserens said accomplishing that goal will be better for all of Temple.
“We continue to pursue getting our kids in school because that equals student achievement,” she said. “And, then, that equals a better community.”
Thus, Ms. Baird said, issuing the citations is more like a labor of love, stemming from a sort of “spare the rod, spoil the child” motif.
“While it’s certainly not fun to do it, while we certainly don’t like writing the tickets, that’s not why we’re doing this,” Ms. Baird said. “If we can provide a strong enough motivation for these kids to stay in class, then that’s why we’re doing it. We don’t want to let the kids fall behind. We don’t want to lose them. That’s why we’re doing this.”
