District Looks at Truancy as a Criminal Matter : Schools: Critics say the get-tough, deterrent policy is insensitive and does little more than to put parents in the glare of publicity.

DOWNEY —  Prosecutors and educators are looking at a 15-minute Downey court hearing this week as a potentially landmark juncture in dealing with truant children.

Parent Leticia Delava stood before a Municipal Court judge Monday to be sentenced on one criminal count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Her crime was not getting her 12-year-old son to school often enough. Her son had 30 unexcused absences last year.

The case marked the first time in at least 30 years that a California parent faced criminal charges for a child’s truancy, prosecutors said.

Judge David W. Perkins sentenced Delava, 35, to three years of probation and 250 hours of parenting classes and counseling. The single mother of two had pleaded no contest in November to one criminal count. She had faced up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

This effort to pursue criminal charges in truancy cases has won praise from many in education and legal circles. They said school officials have unveiled a powerful new tool to fight truancy and its long-term effects.

“It’s all about deterrents,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Higgins said. “Sometimes you have to say, ‘This is what happens if you don’t (get a child to school).’ We want the kid in school. That’s all I want. That’s all our office wants.”

Higgins said he plans to use the criminal code in future truancy prosecutions.

Critics said the case sets a bad precedent about how far a school district can go in using blunt discipline to solve attendance problems that deserve more sensitive solutions.

Downey Unified’s aggressive approach to truancy has resulted in two federal citations issued last year for civil rights violations, they added. Delava’s attorney characterized the case as a publicity stunt by the district attorney’s office and the Downey Unified School District.

“If it had never come this far, we would have been better off,” attorney Jeffrey Oberman said.

The district attorney filed charges against Delava last June, but the child’s attendance problems had developed over several years, district officials said. Delava claimed that her son had chronic stomach trouble that sometimes made him unable to attend school.

But Delava failed to document these problems with doctors’ notes, and as a result, Downey Unified treated the absences as truancies.

“Downey Unified is among the leaders when it comes to attempts to get kids back to school,” said Phil Kauble, an administrative consultant with the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

Excluding dropouts, Downey Unified has improved its attendance rate each of the past three years, from 93.28% to 94.32%, according to the county office. By comparison, Long Beach Unified has an attendance rate of about 92%, Glendale Unified about 95%. The Alhambra school districts have an attendance rate similar to Downey’s.

Downey’s attendance is impressive for a district in which thousands of students belong to transient families, Kauble said.

Besides the educational benefits, good attendance means dollars for a school system. School districts receive state money based on each day a child is in school. One absence costs about $17 a day.

The mechanisms for dealing with truancy are the same in Downey as elsewhere, but Downey officials are more aggressive than many districts in using them, Kauble added.

Like other school districts in the county, Downey Unified has a committee at each school to deal with attendance problems. These committees have dealt with 310 cases this year in the district of 15,800 students. Officials expect another 100 cases by June.

If a truancy problem persists, the family goes before a School Attendance Review Board. Parents must sign a contract stating that the child’s attendance will improve. The next step is a hearing before a probation officer working with the district attorney’s office, and possible prosecution of the parent, child or both.

The district attorney’s office joined the anti-truancy campaign three years ago after research showed that today’s truants tend to become tomorrow’s criminals.

Until the Delava case, such prosecutions had been pursued under the Education Code. A conviction under that code is like a traffic ticket. A parent or child can be taken into custody only after violations of a probation agreement and then only for five days.

In the Delava case, Downey officials bypassed the Education Code prosecution and opted to press criminal charges, which received heavy press coverage.

“We didn’t feel she’d respond to the Education Code process,” said Stan Hanstad, director of pupil services for Downey Unified. “We obviously got the attention of the parent this way.”

Hanstad said that Delava’s son had few unexcused absences since the charges were filed.

“Our intent is never to have a parent or child go to jail,” he said.

But Delava’s attorney said his client was denied due process and rushed to criminal prosecution to be made an example of. “You take the guillotine to the problem rather than dealing with it,” Oberman said. “It does the child and family no good.

“We’ve dragged (Delava) into the glare of television lights. . . . The school district should be working with families, not newspapers and televisions.”

Even some school officials questioned whether a criminal prosecution was necessary.

Parent advocate Jeanne Corbett said Downey Unified, in its zeal to confront truancy, has brought parents before truancy boards improperly.

“Yes, people should send their kids to school, no question about it,” Corbett said. “But when people have well-documented medical reasons for not attending school, it seems real bizarre to use this process.”