After the loss of a successful truancy prevention program run by the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office, local school districts have taken on the monumental task of implementing their own programs.

The Truancy Intervention and Parent Accountability Program recently became a casualty of the state budget crisis when the county — facing budget cuts of its own — decided to discontinue funding for it.

However, a $1.37 million grant obtained by Fighting Back Santa Maria Valley may blunt some of the pain for school districts and make it easier for students to receive the social services they need to stay in school.

“While we’re sorry that the partnership with the county in the truancy prevention program is gone by the wayside, we’re not going to be left without any focused efforts in that area,” said Jeff Hearn, superintendent of the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District.

In October, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors canceled the truancy prevention program after falling two votes short of passing a motion to continue its funding. The measure required four votes to pass and only Supervisors Brooks Firestone and Joni Gray voted in favor of it.

The District Attorney’s Office started the program in 1997 by joining forces with several school districts and county agencies to come up with a preventive measure to combat juvenile crime and delinquency.

According to the District Attorney’s office, high school dropouts comprise more than 82 percent of the United States prison population.

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In the aftermath of the supervisors’ decision, North County school districts have scrambled to fill the gap by implementing their own truancy prevention programs, which they plan to model after the former county program.

Maite Franck, supervisor of the Truancy Intervention and Parent Accountability Program, will stay on board with the county until June to assist the districts in their efforts.

“The bottom line of the program is to ... make sure (kids’) needs are met so they can go to school,” Franck said.

A student would set the wheels of the county-run program in motion once he or she accumulated three unexcused absences. That triggered the school to send home a letter to the parents. Three more unexcused absences, and the student was required to attend a group meeting with parents to talk about the importance of attending class.

If the truant behavior continued, the parents and their student were required to meet with the Truancy Mitigation Team — comprised of social workers, teachers and other professionals — to assess what, if any, social services the family or student would be eligible for.

The fourth step in the program involved the student going before the School Attendance Review Board, whose members decided whether to refer the student to the Probation Department.

The program has enjoyed some success; Last year in the North County, 5,987 initial letters went out, but only three of those students ended up on probation.

With the county program gone, school districts will run similarly structured programs with the help of truancy prevention specialists already stationed at each school site.

“We’re going with the flow. We’re going to miss the DA’s involvement ... We’re hoping to eventually put the same kind of clout here,” said Jesse Bass, Lompoc Unified School District’s director of student and research services.

Schools will now have to schedule review board hearings and conduct the individual and group meetings themselves. In some cases, school districts may have the authority to refer truant kids to probation and fine their parents.

The $1.37 million Safe Schools Healthy Students Grant obtained by Fighting Back, a local nonprofit group dedicated to fighting youth alcohol and drug abuse, should help ease the transition by funding additional truancy prevention professionals for every North County school district, school officials say.

Also, the District Attorney’s Office won’t completely abandon the school districts.

“(The District Attorney’s Office) will still be a voice at the table because we truly need that,” said Teresa Menchaca, executive director for Fighting Back.

Review board chairwoman Teresa Carbajal said the county will work with the schools to make sure students receive the resources they need.

“I’m hoping we can continue addressing the needs of truants,” she said. “They are the dropouts, they are the ones that are going to move onto criminal activities. They are the ones who need our attention and they aren’t going away, so our truancy prevention efforts should not go away.”

December 1, 2008