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Last year the Utah Legislature passed a bill putting an end to specific measures that schools used against truancy. SB219 was proposed by Senator Dan McCay, and forbade the legal consequences to truancy that had previously been used such as referral to court or to DCFS.
When the bill first passed, there was confusion over what exactly the bill affected since, according to the bill, all “punitive measures” against truancy had been banned. This brought concern over whether the bill had banned the schools Attendance Recovery Class, so ARC was stopped at the end of last year.
However, the forbidden “punitive measures” referenced in the bill have been defined by the Utah State Board of Education as referring parents to the Court or DCFS in circumstances of chronic truancy. Because of that, ARC has been reimplemented this year.
“Because we have some clarification on language, we can come back to something that’s a little more balanced,” said NS Superintendent Nan Ault. “It helps us serve students, it helps them finish credits and classes, it helps them still be engaged in school; we still want [students] here.”
Before this bill was passed, a lot of consecutive unexcused absences could cause a parent to be either referred to the court or DCFS. Now, while other measures are still in place to help parents with a student who is frequently truant, neither of those referrals are an option for extreme cases of truancy, a problem that Ault sees as reaching beyond academics to students’ safety.
“When you get to that extreme, you are worried about the safety of a child. You’re worried about where they are, and how they’re being cared for,” Ault said. “I do have students that live in unsafe circumstances at home, so it makes it difficult for us to apply that backstop for parents to say, ‘I need to see this child, is this child safe?’ I can’t even refer them to DCFS, so it makes it difficult for us as schools to maintain that safety for students.”
The bill was created to provide a safe back to school environment after COVID, so sick students would not be punished for missing school. Many attempts were made to contact Senator Dan McCay inquiring of the purposes and background of this bill, but he never responded.
Though the bill was meant to create a safe environment, it impacts students’ education as well as their safety.
“For me, it’s about protecting students,” Ault said. “About making sure students are at school as much as possible so they can be educated, so that they can have the care and support that they need, or that they’re fed so that they make these connections so that they develop into healthy adults.”
ARC is helpful because it requires students to be in school so that they can be educated and have various other needs met.
According to NS English and ARC teacher Catherine Carney, when students are frequently truant in school it isn’t only harmful now, but they develop an attitude that can become problematic in their adult life.
“I think it’s harmful because it gives students the wrong attitude toward kind of life in general,” Carney said. “I talked to a student last year who, the student, had a coworker who didn’t show up to work for a week, didn’t call in, didn’t arrange for someone to take their shift or anything, and that student was fired and the student couldn’t understand why.”
According to Carney, ARC can be a great aid to students who have missed classes if they are willing to make up the work that they have missed; it is all dependent on how they decide to use the time.
“If they use their time in here wisely, then, yes, it can help bring that grade up because it’s homework time,” Carney said. “But if they come and, you know, they’ve got headphones in, and they’re watching a video, I don’t know that, and they’re wasting their time, and you know, they could be doing homework. So it has the ability to do so, but again it’s the choice of the student.”
ARC is beneficial if time spent there is used to its best advantage. According to Ault, the purpose of the attendance policy is not to punish a student, but to encourage them to take responsibility for their education.
“The supports and interventions for teenagers are really to motivate them to act in their own best interest. It’s not meant to be punishing,” Ault said. “What you’re doing is giving them an opportunity to come back to the game and finish it up and do it on their own.”
