Crnkovich wants the effort to grow into something like the Jefferson County Truancy Diversion Project, a model program in Louisville, Ky.
Lincoln Public Schools officials also are interested in the Louisville program.
Building Bright Futures, a public-private partnership in Omaha, is working with metropolitan Omaha school districts on pilot programs to improve attendance in 15 schools.
Crnkovich and officials from Lincoln Public Schools, Omaha Public Schools and Building Bright Futures plan to go to Kentucky in April to study the Louisville effort.
“I'm hoping that by visiting with like individuals . . . we can understand how they established it, how it works and learn whether something like that can be used in Omaha,” Crnkovich said.
GRAND ISLAND, Neb. Alex Schneberger, a sixth-grader with short brown hair and a strong throwing arm, walked into the Grand Island school board meeting room one recent morning.
He was flanked by his parents, Mark and Ronda Schneberger. The three took seats at a table beside Alex's middle school principal and a school social worker.
They all looked up at a man with a crew cut and wearing a dark business suit. He was perched in the school board president's usual seat, but the nameplate on the desk read “Martin Klein, Deputy County Attorney.”
What could an 11-year-old have done to land in such a situation?
He had missed 15 days of school.
That's five absences fewer than Nebraska truancy law allows. His parents said Alex had been sick. But in Grand Island, grade school kids and families who appear to be entering patterns of chronic absenteeism or tardiness are called in to see a deputy county attorney well before they hit the legal limit and well before a family could land in juvenile court.
It's an innovative anti-truancy initiative that has caught the attention of lawmakers in the Nebraska Legislature and officials of several school districts around the state. Their ears would have perked up even more if they had been in that board room with Alex.
His was a review hearing, a follow-up to previous sessions. The report: Alex had had perfect attendance since the previous meeting, Feb. 24. His grades improved, going from a D-minus to a B-plus in one class.
“Alex, do you know how this happened?” the principal asked.
“Because I was in school,” Alex answered with a smile.
“That's our goal here,” Klein told the boy and his parents. “You guys should be proud.”
There's a heightened focus on school attendance these days as school and community leaders seek ways to improve students' academic achievement and prevent juvenile crime. The Nebraska Legislature has drawn a strong link between those two goals with a juvenile justice bill now in the works.
Schools would be required to report truancy cases monthly to the state. They would have to collaborate with county attorneys on how to deal with truants. And the bill sets a clear threshold 20 days of absences, excused or not, during a school year after which a student must be reported to the county attorney.
Currently, the threshold is 20 days of unexcused absences.
The idea is early intervention: Find out why kids are missing school and do something about it before it's too late.
“We want the alarm to go off as early as possible,” said State Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha, chairman of the Judiciary Committee and co-author of Legislative Bill 800.
He said that appears to be happening in Grand Island.
The program started in the 2008-09 school year. Grand Island Public Schools had obtained a federal grant in 2006 for six social workers in elementary and middle schools. Then last school year, the school district and Hall County Attorney Mark Young agreed to share the cost of assigning a deputy county attorney half time to the school district.
They focused on kindergarten through eighth grade because the federal grant targeted those grades, and because that's prime time for changing attendance patterns.
Research shows that absenteeism in middle school is a leading dropout predictor. A 2009 World-Herald analysis in Omaha found that students who miss 20 or more days in eighth grade had only a 33 percent chance of graduating from high school in four years.
National statistics similarly link eighth-grade absenteeism and high school dropout rates, said Ken Seeley, president of the Colorado-based National Center for School Engagement.
He said intervening early can make a big difference if it's done right.
Seeley said the Grand Island program seemed to have several of the elements that have helped to make programs in Jacksonville, Fla., and King County (Seattle), Wash., successful.
In Grand Island, school officials look for patterns of absenteeism or tardiness. In one recent case, a kindergartner who was brought into the truancy program has three older siblings who dropped out of school.
Social workers contact parents when a child has missed about 10 percent of school days. If the parents don't respond or the problem doesn't improve over the next couple of weeks, Klein sends a letter to the parents. If that doesn't prove effective, a second letter goes out calling in the parents and child to meet with a social worker. They develop an attendance plan addressing the underlying causes of the problem.
If a family doesn't comply, the parents and child are called in to a hearing with Klein. That triggers follow-up hearings.
If the problems remain unresolved, the cases are referred to the County Attorney's Office to be filed in juvenile court.
In the program's first year, seven cases were referred to the County Attorney's Office. So far this year, three have been referred. And most student attendance has improved at each stage of the process.
In some cases, the solutions have been as simple as arranging school rides with a neighbor, buying a family an alarm clock or helping the family get connected with a community nonprofit agency that provided clothes to a child who was skipping school because he was embarrassed about his clothes. Other situations have been tougher, requiring intervention by workers from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services because of severe family problems.
And there have been failures. One boy completed his final attendance hearing, then went out the same day and did something that got him arrested. His marijuana-possession arrest landed him in juvenile court.
Still, Klein and school officials said the program is producing positive results. Officials from Kearney, Lexington and Lincoln have visited Grand Island to see how the program is working.
“The word is getting out that if you go to school in Grand Island, you better go to school,” said Jeff Gilbertson, principal of Barr Middle School in Grand Island.
Alex and his parents were one of five families who had hearings with Klein on March 16, after the Legislature gave first-round approval to the juvenile justice bill.
Among the others, a 12-year-old sixth-grader came in with her mother for a follow-up hearing. Graciela Diaz had missed a lot of days last school year, and then she missed an entire week early in this school year. She missed two more days after her mother, Francisca Aguirre, received a letter from the school.
Graciela had been ill, Aguirre said. She said Graciela is a good student who likes school, but maybe was staying home too much because she didn't feel well when she actually could have made it through the day. Everyone worked out a plan whereby Graciela would contact the school nurse if she didn't feel well.
“I tell her to ‘Man up. Take a couple Tylenol and go to school,'” her mother said.
Graciela's hearing went like Alex's. It was a good report: She was missing less school, checking in with a nurse if she felt sick, and her grade-point average had risen from a 3.8 to a 4.0.
Also that day, a mother came in for an initial hearing with her 11-year-old fifth-grader who is chronically tardy and absent too often. The mom held a squirming, squawking baby on her lap. Her 3-year-old tried to distract the baby. Klein explained that Nebraska law requires children to attend school until at least age 16. If they don't, they can end up in juvenile court.
The mother was a little vexed. It seemed to her that the school was holding not only this year's problems against her but last year's problems as well. She works nights, sometimes until 2 a.m. Her husband works an early morning shift, so she has all three kids in the mornings. And traffic is terrible between her house and school.
Klein sounded a sympathetic tone, but was firm.
“We've got to fix this,” he told the mother. “We've got to get this addressed somehow yet this school year. ... There are challenges, but we've got to have you overcome them. The school is willing to help you in any way we can.”
He encouraged the mother to get together with school social worker Sally Smith, who was seated beside her at the meeting. They scheduled a follow-up meeting for early April.
As for Alex, his mother said she felt insulted at first when they were drawn into the truancy program. Ronda Schneberger said she didn't think he needed the program just because there were times he didn't feel well enough to go to school. The family meetings with the district and Klein led to an understanding that they would push him to go to school even when he didn't think he was up to it.
She now calls the program a good idea that has helped Alex. She said it “kicked him in the butt as far as getting his stuff done.”
Klein told Alex he was as smart as his sister, a straight-A high school student, as long as he goes to school. And Alex learned that he might have to go to summer school and miss playing for the Grand Island Riverdogs select baseball team.
“I see where they're coming from,” Alex's mom said. “It isn't perfect, but it's a good idea for the kids who really need it.”
Contact the writer:
444-1057, christopher.burbach@owh.com
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