District attorney announces latest truancy program push

CLOVIS — Issuing court summons to four offending parents, 9th Judicial District Attorney Andrea Reeb announced Thursday the latest push in a campaign to forestall crime by cracking down on truancy.

Four parents will be summoned to magistrate court on petty misdemeanor charges of “Failure to Enforce Compulsory School Attendance from the 2018-2019 school years,” according to Reeb’s news release. A first-time conviction carries no jail time, but subsequent offenses are “punishable by six months in jail and/or a $500 fine.”

State law considers a student with over 10 unexcused absences in a year a “habitual truant,” and the children of those charged locally “had in excess of 25 absences in a short time period and no valid reasons as to why their children were not in school,” said the release.

The charges follow “numerous attempts by the Clovis school system and Children, Youth and Families to assist in correcting the chronic truancy issue” as well as efforts by Reeb’s office “to reach out again to the parents of the truant child to try and correct the problem prior to proceeding with the prosecution of the parent.”

Reeb told The News she has successfully prosecuted similar charges against three other parents in the past, and that her predecessor did the same in years prior. A first-time conviction is punishable by a fine of up to $250. One of the four parents charged recently had been previously charged, but the case was dismissed after the mother agreed to make a donation to a charity program through magistrate court.

“Technically, these are all first offenses, but three of the four have been referred to our office before,” Reeb added.

The children of the parents charged recently “range in ages from 10 to 13 years old,” said the release, and Reeb said she doesn’t intend to fault parents of older children who skip class of their own accord.

“While this charge might not carry a very stiff penalty, statistics have shown that a huge percentage of crimes committed in the Ninth Judicial District were committed by high school dropout,” said the release. “The District Attorney’s Office is committed to doing everything possible to reduce the amount of crime overall in our community which means enforcing compulsory school attendance and continuing to be proactive with our Abolish Chronic Truancy (ACT) program.”