HOUSTON – Truancy can be an indication of deeper problems in a child’s life. This is why the Texas Education Code requires school districts to use truancy prevention measures to try to keep kids in class.
The Texas Education Agency also requires school districts to report prevention efforts each year.
“Once you miss a class, it’s easier to miss more. You learn less, and you don’t want to go back to school many times,” said Bob Sanborn, president and CEO of Children at Risk. “These are kids that are bound to be dropouts, these are kids that are going to be part of a society that can’t find a job. They have a harder time finding a job, they aren’t going to college. I think these kids are just not maximizing themselves when they’re absent from school.”
Truancy can also be a signal of deeper problems in a child’s life, according to Mike Matranga. He is the vice chair for the National Council for School Safety Directors, a retired Secret Service agent and former head of safety and security for Texas City ISD. Matranga now operates M6 Global Defense, which specializes in school safety.
“Truancy is a big factor in those that are on a pathway to violence,” said Matranga. “Truancy, along with academic decline and discipline increase, are three of the largest factors of identifying someone that’s that’s maybe wanting to harm themselves or others.”
KPRC 2 Investigates reviewed truancy-related data sent to the TEA for the last four school years, we found Houston Independent School District reported zero prevention measures and zero truancy complaints filed against parents or legal guardians. Yet, during the same time frame, the district reported tens of thousands of kids being truant each year.
The Texas Education Code defines truancy as a student who “fails to attend school without excuse for 10 or more days or parts of days within six months of a school year.”
State law also requires school districts to notify parents or guardians when a student has three or more unexcused absences during one month and to deploy truancy prevention measures.
Prevention measures can range from imposing behavior improvement plans to providing community-based services to help students who are pregnant, homeless, in foster care, are the principal income earner for the family or suffering from severe illness.
HISD’s Deputy Director of Schools, Daniel Girard told KPRC 2 Investigates the district does have a truancy prevention program, despite reporting zero prevention efforts to the state over the last four school years. Girard said a software program used by the district will start notifying parents once a child has three unexcused absences in one month.
“We will send out letters and text messages, we will send phone calls,” said Girard. “[We] engage our counselors to work with families to see what are some of the things in place that are preventing them from coming to school. Our counselors will reach out to families and help them overcome some hurdles and then set them up with community resources or work with our wraparound services and kind of see like what are the issues that specific families that are preventing children from coming to school.”
“Do you have any kind of ballpark figures, anything as to how often that was happening over the last four school years?” asked KPRC 2 Investigates Robert Arnold.
“I can’t speak to the specific numbers,” said Girard.
Girard said he could not speak to HISD’s truancy prevention efforts before the state takeover in 2023.
“What’s changed now that you can give the assurance that the numbers will be reported accurately?” asked Arnold.
“What I can say is that we are aware that there was a challenge with the previous reporting system, and that’s something we will make sure that happens appropriately,” said Girard.
“When you see tens of thousands of kids a year being reported as truant, is that a concerning number to you?" asked Arnold.
“It’s always concerning when a child is not in school, and it’s always concerning when a child is not receiving enough time to get credit for the course. There’s so much effort to educate students within our system and there’s so much effort to improve student performance from the teacher to the principal; everybody working together to make kids better and increase graduation rates,” said Girard.
“Has there been any talk about changing prevention measures, tweaking the program, something of that nature to try to reach those kids that clearly the prevention measures aren’t working for?" asked Arnold.
“I can’t speak to any sort of talk in terms of refining our efforts. We have our systems in place to ensure that parents are notified and there are individual reasons why families aren’t coming to school," said Girard.
Girard said while notifying parents of unexcused absences is automatic, directly reaching out to parents or visiting a child’s home is a campus-level decision that depends on individual circumstances.
An HISD spokesperson also sent us the following statement:
“The previous compliance team did not properly upload all truancy-related data to the TEA portal. HISD is aware of this issue. This year, a new team is in charge of this data submission requirement and will ensure that our team submits truancy-related data properly to the TEA.”
HISD is not the only district reporting zero truancy prevention efforts.
KPRC 2 reviewed data for all school districts in the state and what we found is prompting action by the TEA. We will update our story with that information later today.
