Law repeals Compulsory School Attendance act

CLOVIS — School attendance legislation signed this year by the governor came as a surprise and disappointment last week to the 9th Judicial District Attorney, whose office has campaigned over past semesters to meet problem truancy cases with criminal charges.

“It just literally took out the whole part about it being referred to the District Attorney office,” Andrea Reeb told The News on Monday. “It repealed the Compulsory School Attendance act, and it took out any option after juvenile probation works with them.”

House Bill 236 (the Attendance for Success Act), signed April 3 by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, indeed repeals the Compulsory School Attendance law while also “providing a process for prevention of absences, for early intervention, for specialized supports and for referrals to the Children, Youth and Families Department.”

The new act goes into effect in the 2020-21 school year.

The act establishes different tiers for identifying and addressing absenteeism in student populations. “Whole school prevention” applies to all students and “individualized prevention” targets students who miss between five and ten percent of classes or school days for any reason. “Early intervention” is for students missing between ten and twenty percent of classes, and “intensive support” is for those missing more than twenty percent.

It also enacts a new section of the public school code, “prohibiting out-of-school suspension or expulsion as the punishment for absences” and requiring schools to provide interventions such referrals to health care and social service providers and appropriate counseling.

Progressive interventions for chronically absent students include talks with parents and “establish(ing) nonpunitive consequences at the school level.” After that it provides an avenue for referrals to the local probation office “for an investigation as to whether the student should be considered to be a neglected child or a child in a family in need of family services because of excessive absenteeism...”

Reeb issued court summons in June on four parents for petty misdemeanor charges of failing to enforce the Compulsory School Attendance law last year, and she told The News on Monday that she wasn’t sure what would become of those cases now. Reeb emphasized that the children of the parents charged were all between 10 and 13 years of age and “had in excess of 25 absences in a short time period and no valid reasons as to why the children were not in school.”

A first-time conviction on those charges would mean a fine of up to $250, whereas subsequent offenses could result in jail time. Reeb maintains it is an uncommon but effective last-resort tool in a more comprehensive push by her office to curb truancy.

“While the penalties weren’t extremely stiff when we prosecuted parents — we probably did six a year — (HB236) still took away that ability and that tool to be able to do something,” Reeb told The News. “Which I know the schools really appreciated, and it did open our parents’ eyes.”

Reeb said in past news releases that her office’s Abolish Chronic Truancy (ACT) program was driven in part by statistics “show(ing) that a huge percentage of crimes committed in the Ninth Judicial District were committed by high school dropouts.”

The act Feb. 21 and March 14 by unanimous votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate, respectively, but Reeb said it was never brought to District Attorneys’ attention for sponsorship.

“Kind of, we’re all just finding out about it now,” Reeb said. “All the DAs were very surprised, why didn’t we know about this, why weren’t we asked to participate.”

Reeb said she was “disappointed” that this avenue of addressing truancy was no longer available, that “we kind of think it did help, talking to different parents, they at least did understand that they could be charged.”

With that said, she conceded that “prosecuting parents was a minor part of it” and that her office intended to “keep being proactive.

“It was a great tool, but our big part of ACT is to be proactive and provide incentives,” she said. “We’re still definitely doing that program.”