The Lost City

Taken from: http://jacksonville.com/opinion/editorials/2009-03-11/story/missing_school_settling_for_less

You won't find this troubled Duval County city on maps or Google.

But "The Lost City" exists. And it's sapping your safety, tax dollars and quality of life every day.

The inhabitants: the more than 45,600 public school students who miss two weeks or more of class a year, including 14,200 who miss more than 20 school days a year.

That's more missing than residents of Naples, Panama City or Key West. More than the combined populations of Orange Park, Atlantic Beach, Fernandina Beach and Neptune Beach.

Just a school problem, right?

Try our problem as a city.

Seventy-five percent of jailed criminals are former chronic truants, and 44 percent of violent juvenile crime happens during school hours, according to Jacksonville United Against Truancy.

Progress - or the lack of it - could decide how long Duval reigns as the state's perennial leader in murder and violent crime.

Whether we upgrade our workforce or cripple it.

Whether we scare off new jobs or attract them.

Whether we move forward as a city or slide back.

Minimal attention

The 45,600 missing includes excused and unexcused absences and students suspended from school.

The state says a student is truant who missed 15 unexcused days in three months despite getting help from school officials.

Now, here's a pop quiz:

Is a student with 15 unexcused absences within four months just as "truant" or behind in school?

Can a student with four excused weeks of class missed in a year be just as shaky in school as a student with the same number of unexcused absences?

Or can a child who skips three total weeks of class but has bogus excuse notes from a parent be just as behind as the student with the same total of unexcused absences?

The answers: Yes, although none of these students may be labeled as "truant" under the law.

Finding a truancy definition that fits all the situations is like trying to nail pudding to a wall.

So how many students are truant in Duval? The district can't say.

And it has other problems, such as inconsistent attendance keeping by schools. Students in some cases can skip weeks of class but be "present" by just being counted in a single period or two.

The district must better pinpoint students who miss so much school.

But the numbers of absences overwhelm a cash-strapped school system with 29 attendance workers for 123,217 students - a ratio of about 1 staffer to 4,250 students.

We also know this: Students who miss too much school fall behind and can stay behind in school and life, and we aren't catching enough of them soon enough, if at all.

Yet, good work is being done. More focus on flagging, helping and monitoring students helped the district record 2,000 fewer 21-day-plus absentees last year than two years before, officials say.

But the community faces a crisis when more than one in three of all public school students miss class at least two weeks a year.

Outrageous.

We need a more focused community approach.

That means less finger pointing and more hand joining among parents, the school system, state attorney, the Sheriff's Office, the mayor, City Council, nonprofits, business leaders and others.

The slippery slope

Missing school for sickness or a family vacation is part of life. But regularly missing class leads to community calamities.

Findings from various studies:

Low achievement. Students who miss two or more days a month achieve 25 percent less than their classmates.

Dropouts. Middle school students who miss 18 days or more and do not get help have just a 25 percent chance of graduating on time.

Murder. Sixty percent of murder suspects from June 2003 through June 2006 did not finish high school. One of seven didn't reach ninth grade.

Prisoners. Housing a state prisoner for a year costs $19,308.

Jobless. Youths between the ages of 17 and 24 who have not graduated from high school are three times more likely to be jobless, underemployed or working for very low wages than those who graduated from college.

Bottom line. The value of preventing one student from dropping out is $200,000 for the community. Dropouts earn at least $270,000 less over a lifetime.

But how do you put a cost on a life taken or damaged by crime?

How much is it worth to feel safe in a neighborhood?

How much tax base are we losing because people choose adjoining counties for better schools?

The Lost City poses daunting challenges.

Last year's Jacksonville Journey anti-crime initiative took some important steps toward meeting them, despite forsaking some important truancy proposals.

Now it's time to take a major step forward: filling gaps in the truancy prevention system and expanding what works.

Most troubles from missed school unfold gradually, like a slow-motion train wreck.

We aren't doing enough to derail the train before it reaches The Lost City.

This was the start of a great series in the Florida Times Union. As any teacher will tell you.. students must be present to move FORWARD!