Truancy Problems At CCSD

The Las Vegas Sun ran an article today about the truancy problem within CCSD and for the most part, it was the usual piece of spending money, ducking the issue and not facing facts.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/jun/20/breaking-habit-skipping-school/
First, there is a truancy problem within CCSD, especially with the inner city schools. But a lot of it can be traced directly to the students who make terrible choices. As a teacher, I've seen so many times, a student dropped off at school by their parent and then just walk out the back door to hang out with friends at a home, mall, fast food restaurant or on the streets. Same with students who ride the bus or walk to school.
Students also come to school to walk the halls of campus. Why? Who knows? They also miss selected classes and go to the fun classes.
Are there other reasons, of course, but these seem to be the most prevalent.
There have many times when a concerned person will call the school and say there is a student party at a home close to the school and the school police and some school administrators will respond to the party and escort the students back to school.
From the article (Dr. Edward) "Goldman sees many students who stop going to high school entirely after 10 unexcused absences in a semester because they know they’ll be denied credit for the class even if they make up the work. One solution might be to switch to a quarterly grading cycle instead of two semesters, Goldman said, so that students can at least earn partial credit." In theory, this is true, but the student and their family can request a waiver or just bring in an excuse for the absences and most of the time, the absences will be waived. And the ten unexcused absences are for just one class, not the entire semester and all classes. In other words, if a kid has 12 unexcused absences in math and 2 in gym, he would just fail math and not gym and the rest of their classes.
Truancy is a problem where there is no real solution. Many of our students come from families that have single parents and those parents never finished high school either. Sending them to court won't solve the problem. Arresting them won't solve the problem. Arresting the parent may help but then you are mostly arresting single parents and that won't help the family. You can lock the doors of the campus and forcibly keep the kids in school but the fire department and the ACLU won't like this idea.
You can add more "fun" classes and make school more fun, but that would be at the expense of core classes.
But the bottom line is that short of tying kids to their desks, there is not a whole lot a school can do to prevent truancy. Many parents try to get their kids to school but they have instilled into the child that they need to go to school. Especially in Las Vegas, where high school drop outs can still make good money in the casinos and lower level jobs. A high school drop out can make $100,000+ legally at a casino as a dealer and a female drop out can make that much if they have a good body, working in the casinos as drink girls, once they turn 18 or 21.
So, truancy will be with us for a long time. Until there is a time where is a strong incentive for students go to class, and right now, there is not, you will continue to have the problem of truancy.