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Lawmakers slap a band-aid on truancy

We cannot proceed without first pointing out the irony of a body that schedules itself to work 102 days a year trying to solve the school truancy problem. We wonder if two- and three-day workweeks wouldn’t improve the attendance of teachers and schoolchildren alike.

The Michigan Senate on Thursday approved a pair of bills aimed at making sure students stay in school and get the educations they need and deserve. The first bill is so palm-to-forehead we are almost surprised that it is necessary. It would prohibit school districts from suspending or expelling students for missing school.

Suspending a child who does not want to go to school sounds more like an incentive to drop out than a disciplinary tool. Any district that suspends or expels a student for truancy clearly is not qualified to teach anybody anything.

Other parts of the package would require districts to include data about truancy, attendance and related discipline in annual reports to the state. And it would require school officials to meet with parents of students with irregular attendance.

That’s logical, too, because it might be some parents who need the discipline.

Numbers already reported to state education officials are worrying. Too many students in Port Huron Schools qualify as chronically truant, according to the Michigan Department of Education’s definition — missing 10 or more days per year. Port Huron’s attendance isn’t the best or worst in the area.

A deeper look at the statistics suggests eliminating those absences might be more complicated than what the Senate approved. The highest absence rates are for kindergartners, 42 percent of whom were chronically truant in the 2015-16 school year. But only 14 percent of ninth-graders were in the same category.

Clearly, when a third of elementary students aren’t showing up for school, it is not their fault. But it may not be their parents’ fault entirely, either. Economically disadvantaged students are twice as likely to miss class. Disabled students miss school more often. There are large racial differences.

Half of homeless students are chronically truant. Can scheduling a meeting with their parents fix that? How about parents who are migrant workers?

It is a problem that may need more than 102 days of work to fix.

— The Times Herald

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