No rampant crime wave resulted from massive decriminalization of Texas juvenile life

Grits focuses mostly on the adult justice system, which in Texas still has the largest prison population in the nation, so it's sometimes easy to lose hope. But with school restarting this week, it struck Grits that there's a resonant, unrung bell on juvenile justice whose absence might go unnoticed if one doesn't listen carefully, like a dissonant chord was removed from the middle of some dystopic symphony, resulting in a welcome, if unexpected, major bridge.

In the past decade, Texas has undergone a massive decriminalization of juvenile life, reducing juvenile incarceration and an array of lesser penalties. But juvenile crime dropped the whole while. There was no resulting rampage of criminality sparking a backlash.

When our pal Nate Blakeslee broke the story of sex scandals involving staff and youth at the old Texas Youth Commission back in 2007, the Texas Lege enacted a series of reforms to whittle away the size of the juvie prison population, which dropped like a stone from more than 4,000 when the scandal broke to just more than 1,000 now.

Meanwhile, three years ago the Legislature, led by state Sen. John Whitmire, eliminated ticketing in Texas schools for a host of offenses, a move which reduced the number of Class C misdemeanor tickets issued to students annually by almost 400,000 fewer tickets per year - prompting Huffington Post to declare that, "Texas is doing something genuinely progressive."

Then last year, the Lege moved in a bipartisan fashion to decriminalize truancy.  According to this source:

Officials from the Texas Office of Court Administration testified last month on the effects of the truancy reform legislation and the results are dramatic: Decriminalizing certain truancy offenses, the expunction of 1.5 million prior cases, removal of jail as an option for truancy, and changes to fines. Comparisons of the first four months of 2015 with the same period this year show truancy filings have dropped from 60,000 to 5,000, and parent contributing to non-attendance filings have dropped from 45,000 to 8,200.

So that's 55k fewer truancy filings per year, 37k fewer parent contributing filings, nearly 400k fewer Class C tickets in schools, expulsions down 28% since ticketing reduced, and less than 30 percent as many youth locked up behind bars.

Texas has successfully reduced juvenile incarceration and the overall criminal-justice footprint affecting juvenile life, with juvenile crime continuing to decline the whole time. That's a far bigger deal than the paltry "Texas model" being touted on adult decarceration (based on Texas 2007 adult probation/parole reforms).

How is this transformation of the Texas juvie system not a massive success story that's being trumpeted from the rooftops? And why aren't we talking more about replicating those successes with large-scale decarceration and a reduced justice-system footprint on the adult side?

Guidance released on new truancy law

See more coverage of Texas' new truancy law and an editorial from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Meanwhile, the Office of Court Administration has posted materials to guide locals on implementation of the new law:

• Overview - 84th Legislature Truancy Legislation 
• Flowchart for truancy court procedures 
• Commentary accompanying the truancy court procedures flowchart 
• Flowchart for school responsibilities regarding truancy 
• Commentary accompanying the flowchart for school responsibilities regarding truancy

Dutton-Whitmire bill logjam breaking up: Truancy decrim, juvenile regionalization and grand-jury reform all still have time to pass

The Texas House may get one final chance to vote on Sen. John Whitmire's legislation - now amended onto a passing house bill - to eliminate the state's pick-a-pal grand jury system.

On Tuesday in the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, Chairman John Whitmire substituted his "consensus" senate version of grand jury reform to HB 2150 by Rep. Carol Alvarado, stripping out the version Rep. Harold Dutton amended on the House floor, including the brackets added by Rep. Ed Thompson to limit the bill to counties with more than 500,000 population. He also left on some additional minor changes that were in Alvarado's pre-amended bill.

The Senate earlier passed Whitmire's grand jury reform bill 31-0. HB 2150, added  to the committee agenda at the last minute via a suspension of the rules, also received a unanimous vote in committee and, having been previously agreed to in the upper chamber, should move out of the senate fairly quickly.

Sen. Whitmire also amended his legislation decriminalizing truancy to a bill by Rep. James White. The chairman said White was strongly supportive of decriminalizing truancy, legislation which never received a vote in the House Juvenile Justice and Family Matters Committee, which Rep. Dutton chairs.

Both bills face concurrence votes when they get back to the House, which will essentially be that chamber's up or down vote on Whitmire's legislation.

In related news, on Tuesday, the Houston Chronicle's Mike Ward reported that Whitmire's juvenile regionalization legislation, which would result in at least one TJJD unit closing, was near death's door. "By Tuesday afternoon, supporters of the Senate bill were pushing for a hearing in the House to get the bill moving again — and were looking for a House bill in the Senate that could be amended to make the changes contemplated in Whitmire's bill." Then on Wednesday, Chairman Dutton finally obliged reform supporters and voted SB 1630 unanimously out of his committee. It still has time to pass if the committee report doesn't lollygag on its way to Calendars.

Grits is relieved to see the stalemate subsiding, better late than never. All these issues are too big and important to let inter-chamber rivalries prevent their passage.

UPDATE (5/23): Whitmire's SB 135 eliminating the pick-a-pal system was posted to Saturday's floor calendar and passed on second reading on a voice vote. Third reading is Sunday afternoon. See coverage from the Houston Chronicle.

'Texas prosecutes more truancy cases than all other states combined"

See articles from the liberal Texas Observer and the conservative Breitbart News covering a new report issued last week by Texas Appleseed which included the finding touted in the headline. Nice to see bipartisan support as the Lege prepares to consider the issue: The newly created House Juvenile Justice and Family Issues Committee will hear several truancy related bills at their meeting on Wednesday.

TX Chief Justice: Decriminalize truancy, fund indigent defense, legal aid

Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht this week called on the Legislature to decriminalize truancy and expand state funding for legal aid and indigent defense. The story in the Austin Statesman (Feb. 18) opened:

Speaking to both houses of the Legislature on Wednesday, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht pressed lawmakers to decriminalize school truancy and spend more on legal aid to military veterans.

Hecht also reminded legislators of their duty to ensure that indigent and middle-class Texans are not priced out of access to the courts — whether it be for civil-court remedies, such as restraining orders for victims of domestic abuse, or for legal help for poor defendants facing criminal charges.

His comments on truancy were particularly notable: “When almost 100,000 criminal truancy charges are brought each year against Texas schoolchildren, one has to think that maybe it’s not working. Playing hooky is bad, but is it criminal?” he asked. Reported Chuck Lindell, "A better solution, Hecht said, would be for schools and courts to provide prevention and intervention services designed to get students back in the classroom."

Hecht also, "Called for increased state spending for court-appointed lawyers and public defender offices for indigent defendants accused of a crime, saying the cost has jumped 137 percent since 2001 and is borne mostly by counties." More money, though, isn't the solution to every problem. Grits has suggested the state could reduce indigent defense costs by reducing penalties for low-level nonviolent offenses to fine-only Class C misdemeanors or comparable civil penalties.

Hecht also "Sounded the alarm over partisan judicial elections, saying judges face 'harsh political pressure' that threatens their independence and raises questions about their integrity," though he offered no solutions.

TPPF, TX Appleseed: Texas should decriminalize truancy

Derek Cohen of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Deborah Fowler from Texas Appleseed had an op ed in the Dallas News this week (Oct. 23) making the case for decriminalizing truancy. Here's a notable excerpt:

Texas is one of only two states (the other is Wyoming) that employ the criminal justice system to punish truancy. The Texas Education Code — the body of law that regulates the activity of all educational institutions in the state — empowers school districts to file a criminal complaint against a child as young as 10 who has missed three days of school. After 10 missed days within a six-month period, however, the district’s discretion is removed and it is required to file against the child.

This is known as “Failure to Attend School,” or FTAS, a Class C misdemeanor that can carry up to $500 in fines and leave an indelible mark on the child’s criminal record. These fines are levied all too often on low-income families who don’t have the savings to pay them. If a child or parent is unable to pay the $500, or if the child misses one more day after adjudication, he or she can face jail time for the violation of a valid court order. In addition to the burden this places on families, the criminalization of truancy is a drain on limited court resources.

Adding to the frustration and confusion, the Texas Family Code already has a provision dealing with truancy. This is the Conduct Indicating a Need of Supervision section, which directly mirrors the language in the Education Code. However, this statute prosecutes students only through the juvenile court, eliminating the concern that this will lead to an adult record.

Further, FTAS misdemeanors saddle children with a criminal record that can keep them from future civil or military service. The sealing or expunction of these minor offenses stand to cost hundreds of dollars more in court costs and legal fees for individuals who, usually, are among those least able to afford it.

The Texas Legislature should move quickly to remove the criminalization of skipping school from the Education Code and allow school districts to find a truancy reduction method that works best for them.

Dallas and Fort Bend counties each have established a “truancy court,” a specialized docket that processes only kids who skip school. While the numbers seem to show the courts’ efficacy in reducing dropouts, credit belongs more to the specialized retention programs that judges are ordering truants to attend. The current process that forces children into these programs serves only to saddle these youngsters with a criminal record for minor misbehavior.

Perfumed perpetrator wouldn't get ticket under new Texas statute

Don't know how I missed this 2011 Austin story, but if you did too, check out this TV news report about a girl given a Class C misdemeanor ticket in school for allegedly disrupting class by wearing too much perfume. (Somebody posted the dated item on Reddit yesterday.) The alleged perpetrator was being bullied and used the perfume in response to taunts that she "smelled."

Seeing that story makes me happier than ever that the Texas Legislature this year approved Sen. John Whtimire's SB 1114. That bill prohibits giving Class C tickets to kids under 12. So the girl in the above news story couldn't get a ticket at all under the statute that goes into effect September 1st. After that, police cannot ticket children under 12 in Texas schools. For students 12 and above, all Class C charges must include "an offense report, a statement by a witness, and a statement by a victim. This would apply to offenses that were alleged to have occurred on school property or on a vehicle owned or operated by a county or school district. Prosecutors could not proceed in a trial unless the law enforcement officer met these requirements," according to the official digest (pdf) from the House Research Organization. Moreover, "The Education Code offenses of disruption of class and disruption of transportation would no longer apply to primary and secondary grade students enrolled in the school where the offense occurred." That's a big change.

There are other amendments to the code that should significantly reduce the number of Class C tickets written in schools:

Children accused of any class C misdemeanor (maximum fine of $500), other than a traffic offense, could be referred to a first - offender program before a complaint was filed with a criminal court. The cases of children who successfully completed first - offender programs for class C misdemeanors could not be referred to the court if certain conditions in current law were met.

SB 1114 would prohibit arrest warrants for persons with class C misdemeanors under the Education Code for an offense committed when the person was younger than 17 years old. School district peace officers no longer would be authorized to perform administrative duties for a school district but would be limited to their current authority to perform law enforcement duties.

Also, "Courts would be required to dismiss complaints or referrals for truancy made by a school district if they were not accompanied by currently required statements about whether truancy prevention measures were applied in the case and whether the student was eligible for special education services."

With any luck, thanks to SB 1114, we won't hear more horror stories like that terrible tale of the perfumed perpetrator in the coming school year. Whitmire's legislation has been mostly unheralded - even to some extent on this blog, which should have lauded it in this retrospective post - mainly because it was met with only tepid opposition from law enforcement and received broad, full-throated support from nearly everyone else, regardless of party or station. The media are drawn to a fight but here there was (mostly) sweeping consensus. Be that as it may, SB 1114 was one of the major accomplishments of the 83rd Texas Legislature. Of all the criminal-justice bills passed this year, arguably SB 1114 is the item legislators can point to that will affect the largest number of average, everyday families. It'll be fascinating to parse the data down the line to find out the effect both on ticket writing and the use of traditional school disciplinary methods outside the criminal justice system, which one hopes will be enhanced with the passage of this new law.

Dallas County truancy courts doing vast volume, serve as cash cow, lawuit alleged

"Texas processes more truancy cases through its court systems than all other states combined," according to a complaint (pdf) filed last week with the US Justice Department alleging over- and misuse of Dallas County truancy courts. According to the lawsuit, "The very high volume of juvenile cases heard by municipal and justice courts in Texas has led some to refer to them as the 'shadow juvenile justice system.'" "The volume of juvenile cases filed in municipal and justice courts dwarfs that of the state's juvenile courts."

The numbers back that assertion up: In FY 2012, there were 113,369 total cases filed against Texas students for failure to attend school. Almost none (455 total) were handled through traditional juvenile courts: 76,878 were filed in municipal or justice courts - 15% of those through municipal courts and the rest through county justices of the peace. By contrast, 36,036 truancy cases were filed in four Dallas County truancy courts during the same year. That's an enormous number. Much larger Harris County saw just 12,723 truancy cases filed in FY 2012.

One element I hadn't understood is the extent to which truancy cases have been automated, at least in Big D. There are four school districts in Dallas County and in each of them, "Cases are 'e-filed' by schools with students' attendance records triggering a system that electronically 'pushes' cases to the courts once they have reached the designated filing date - leaving probable cause determination to a computer," the complaint alleges. What's more, alleged the complaint, "Children are routinely criminalized for behavior as innocuous as being tardy to class." And once a youngster has racked up a bunch of truancy tickets, "Youth may be jailed once they turn 17 if they have not paid their fines and costs in full."

Dallas County has full-time truancy courts funded entirely from fines and fees from defendants - in other words, they operate on an eat-what-you-kill basis that gives them an incentive to maximize truancy cases, or at least ensure their numbers don't decline so that revenues remain steady. That creates perverse incentives, alleged the lawsuit, and IMO it's hard to disagree.

For those interested in more details (and Grits found it a fascinating read), see the 59-page civil complaint (pdf) filed by Texas Appleseed , Disability Rights Texas and the National Center for Youth Law. This should be interesting litigation: Lots of important, long-neglected issues are being raised that one seldom sees publicly acknowledged, much less comprehensively vetted.

Via Think Progress.

Forensic follies, Williamson County jury pools, COINTELPRO, and other stories

Grits noticed several items this week that didn't make it into full posts but deserve readers' attention:

Lawsuit over constitutionality of truancy charges
Texas Appleseed is taking Dallas ISD to court. See a lengthier account from the Dallas Morning News, but it's behind their paywall. More from Alternet.

The Michael Morton case and Williamson County jury pools
Because of hometown publicity, a capital murder case was moved from Waco to Williamson County, only to find during voir dire that "About 10 prospective jurors out of 55 questioned so far either were disqualified or excused by agreement because of their feelings of distrust for the criminal justice system spawned by Morton’s 
exoneration," reported the Waco Tribune Herald. That's a pretty remarkable development among Williamson County juries.

Art in public spaces - like utility boxes
Grits has advocated allowing invited, artistic graffiti in blank public spaces from utility boxes to the backs of street signs to highway facades. That seems to be the idea behind what's going on here, with the twist that the artist is a Buddhist monk.

Ellis County may privatize jail
The Ellis County (Waxahachie) commissioners issued an RFP to privatize their county jail, we learn from Texas Prison Bidness. More background here.

Most TDCJ volunteers are faith based
Reported the Conroe Courier, discussing a bill by rookie state Rep. Steve Toth, "TDCJ currently has 20,047 volunteers, including 18,111 who are faith-based volunteers providing religious and other services in jails and prisons statewide"

'Breathprint' as biometric?
Interesting concept. Probably needs more confirming research and field testing before it's ready for use as a practical, reliable, court-worthy forensic method. Despite the statement in the linked article, I'm not yet sure I believe claims that breathprints can be uniquely identified. My understanding is it hasn't even been proven fingerprints are unique in the world, much less "breathprints."

Allegedly fake certifications may compromise 1,200+ DWI cases
Even if "breathprint" biometrics are legit, the technical application of breath forensics must be also be valid. A DPS supervisor in Conroe, "Glenn Merkord was suspended for 30 days this month for renewing certifications for machine operators who had not fulfilled all of the requirements for certification, according to a letter the Department of Public Safety sent Merkord notifying him of his punishment," reported the Houston Chronicle. Up to 1,200 cases could be affected.

Salvador cases keep coming
Nuther case overturned today by the Court of Criminal Appeals based on the Jonathan Salvador case, this one an eight year sentence. By my count, that brings the total to 20, totaling 159.5 years so far. Now that the Coty case has been decided, one suspects we may see many more, similar cases on the weekly hand down lists in the very near future. Salvador worked on nearly 5,000 drug cases.

From the COINTELPRO files
Interesting, timely history lesson from the Austin Chronicle about a time just a few decades ago when the American intelligence apparatus was turned on domestic political dissidents, focusing on events at UT-Austin.

Edward Snowden, NSA phone spying scandal and cell-phone location data
Bruce Schneier lists questions that need to be answered before anyone prosecutes Edward Snowden. Ed Hubbard, writing at Big Jolly Politics, has questions of his own. Interesting post from Fabius Maximus on the meaning of government and corporate protestations the NSA does not have "direct access" to private systems. The telecom providers like ATT and Verizon, incidentally, have issued no such denials. Finally, somebody started a petition at whitehouse.gov asking President Obama to pardon Edward Snowden. Go sign if you support it. If the petition gets 100,000 online "signatures" in 30 days, the White House will formally respond. As of this writing, it had reached 68,435 in just four days.

It should be noted, the issue of cell-phone "metadata" relates directly to the location-tracking legislation proposed by Rep. Bryan Hughes, Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinonosa and Sen. Craig Estes during the 83rd regular session. In particular, as Grits reported from the conference at the Yale Law School on location tracking and biometrics, Verizon and Sprint use GPS coordinates instead of triangulation (like, say, ATT and T-Moble). The Wall Street Journal reports the NSA is gathering credit card data, too. That's an even greater invasion of privacy IMO than the pen-register/trap-and-trace data (phone numbers in and out) that's been more widely publicized.

On law enforcement as rent seeking: A lament

A couple of recent stories reminded me of the extent law-enforcement has come to be viewed by many in government as a revenue enhancer as opposed to a means dispensing justice.

On Saturday, the Houston Chronicle ran a story titled, "Ticket dismissals cost Houston, thanks to plea bargains," lamenting that traffic ticket cases in municipal court aren't bringing in more money. The police union president opined that, "Traffic tickets are rarely dismissed because of problems caused by Houston police officers who write up the infractions," but others in the system pinned much of the blame on exactly that cause. "Sylvia Garcia, the former chief judge of Houston municipal courts, said prosecutors are often forced to dismiss or plea bargain traffic cases set for trial when witnesses, such as police officers who issued the ticket, are not available to testify," reported the Chronicle's James Pinkerton. And Houston traffic attorney Paul Kubosh "estimated that 30 to 40 percent of officers subpoenaed to testify don't appear for trial."

Whatever the reason, the story frets that "The substantial number of dismissals, which costs the city millions in lost revenue, is a result of an overburdened court system reliant on plea bargaining, according to police union officials and attorneys." Coupled with an overall decline in tickets written recently, both in Houston and statewide, the result is the justice system generating less revenue. Of course, that's not its purpose, or it shouldn't be.

In Dallas, the city council fired several municipal court judges they thought were being too lenient and brought on newbies who they expect will generate more revenue for the city, a move which has sparked intense controversy and a lawsuit.

On a similar theme, I was interested to see an AP story published in the Lubbock paper (Sept. 3) lamenting lost revenue from truancy by students which noted that:

The attendance push has been particularly strong in California, New York, Texas and other states where schools funding is based on how many children are in their seats each day, rather than enrollment. Several California districts have made a back-to-school ritual of reminding parents that schools lose money whenever kids are out.

Some have asked families with children who missed school for avoidable reasons such as family trips to reimburse schools the $30-$50 a day the absence cost in lost funding, or at least consider having a child with the sniffles or a stomach ache show up for the first part of the day so he or she can be counted before going home sick.

“If a child is not at school for any reason at all, including sickness, the district does not collect revenue,” the Spreckels Unified School District in Salinas, Calif., wrote in a pledge form issued this month asking parents to take vacations and to schedule routine doctor’s appointments when classes are not in session.

Under pressure from the local district attorney (emphasis added) and others to improve its attendance rate, officials in Berkeley last year got much stricter about demanding meetings with parents of students with three unexcused absences and conducting midday “sweeps” of local teen hangouts to identify ditchers. By June, the district had made $1.4 million more for the current school year and avoided laying off 148 teachers, said student services director Susan Craig.

How often is law enforcement dragged into truancy enforcement? A bill analysis from failed 2011 legislation at the Texas Lege declared that, "there were 65,521 cases filed for parents contributing to nonattendance in the municipal and justice of the peace courts of the state" in the previous fiscal year. I have no problem with schools making every effort to identify students who miss class and work with their parents get them to school as a means of dropout prevention. But I've got a big problem with criminalizing everyday juvenile behaviors and diverting criminal justice resources from public-safety for rent-seeking purposes, particularly when the agencies doing so will later turn around and raise my taxes. To me, kids skip school (and parents condone it) because the product is often not of sufficient quality to make it a big priority for them. Then the state punishes them for voting with their feet.

San Antonio schools to track students with RFIDs in ID cards

As if turning your cell phone into a GPS tracker isn't bad enough, at North Side ISD in San Antonio they're doing the same thing with student ID cards. Via a new-to-me blog called Catfish for Lunch (named, flatteringly, as an homage to this site), I discovered the following notice:

School’s back in session, so we start this week’s roundup with Papers, Please!’s report that the San Antonio Public Schools Plan to Make Students Wear Radio Tracking Beacons.  The school district interested in using these ID chips is calling them Smart Student ID Cards.  If you’re wondering what to think about this, here is EPIC’s Position Paper on the Use of RFID in Schools.

The blog Papers, Please! reported that two NSISD schools have each:

installed an array of “100 or more” RFID readers so that students’ movements can be tracked whenever and wherever they are on school premises. ... To make sure students actually carry their RFID badges, they’ll have to use them for all purchases of school lunches as well as for mandatory attendance checks.

This is not just Big-Brotherish but stupid, as if kids won't readily carry around other students' ID cards so their friends can sneak away. Calling them "Smart Student ID Cards" is outright Orwellian. Just because schools choose to treat students like cattle doesn't mean they're as dumb as the average bovine. The school district says the two campuses in question were chosen for the pilot project because they "have a high rate of truancy and tardiness," but the RFID scheme won't assist at stopping those problems, but merely document them. And in cases where students carry each others' ID cards as a ruse, it may even mask them.

IMO, nobody benefits from this but the vendor.

What message sent from jailing honors student for truancy?

Stories like this just make the state look foolish: "Texas honor student jailed for missing too much school." A Montgomery County honors student working two jobs was jailed for excessive truancy. Reported KHOU out of Houston:

"If you let one run loose, what are you gonna' do with the rest of 'em?," said Judge Lanny Moriarty. "Let them go too? A little stay in the jail for one night is not a death sentence."

But Tran's classmates said she had a lot more to juggle than the average teen.

"She goes from job to job from school. She stays up until 7 a.m. in the morning doing her homework," said Devin Hill, a classmate and co-worker.

On top of that, Tran said her parents spilt up and moved away, leaving her to support her younger sister. (Ed. note: The sister lives with a relative; Tran lives with an employer's family.)

The judge admitted that he wanted to make an example of the teen.

Tran had to spend 24 hours in jail and had to pay a $100 fine. 

Notably, public reaction in favor of the teen and against Judge Moriarty, who told KHOU he feared that, if he dismissed Tran's case, other defendants would think, "Well, he’s soft. He’s not gonna do nothing." (On Reddit, someone commented that "Moriarty" is a terrific name for a villain)

So the judge is worried about the message he would send, but was the message he ACTUALLY sent really "stay in school"? Or was it, "Your situation doesn't matter." "You don't matter." "Excellence be damned." "The pettiest of our rules are more important than your desperate life circumstances. Drop out if you can't follow them all because we'll jail you if you don't." What message do you think was sent by the judge's sentence, and what harm might come from Moriarty using his discretion to let Miss Tran avoid jail? Do you think the judge's decision encourages Montgomery County youth to stay in school, or to drop out if it looks like work and/or familial obligations might make them miss a few days?

Family trips = truancy? Rent seeking schools punish parents for family travels

A story in the Dallas News published last month ("Texas truancy law offers guidance for some, loopholes for others," May 16, behind their paywall) gave an absurd example of how Texas truancy laws are being misused.  According to reporter Jessica Meyers:

Leila and Frank Pate returned from an extended Christmas vacation in Italy to a court summons. They’d prepared for the travails of travel with young children. But the Frisco couple didn’t envision it leading to a misdemeanor charge and a label of criminal negligence.

“We’re criminals because we took a vacation to see family,” said Leila Pate, who wanted her second-grader and kindergartner to visit ailing relatives in the farthest stretches of southern Italy.

She informed the school district about the trip and packed a bag of class work. The kids practiced their Italian. They received approval for two of the 10 planned absences.

The summons came before the jet lag ended.

The district said the children’s attendance reports showed an unacceptable number of days missed. State law requires schools to prosecute when students skip or arrive late 10 or more days within a six-month period or three or more days within a month.

“We’re looking at [the order] and going, ‘This is just absolutely bonkers,’” said Frank Pate, who runs several businesses with his wife. “This is about money for them.”

Anybody who thinks those kids didn't learn more traveling in Italy than they would have spending that time in school is a fool and a philistine.

Meyers notes that the county and school districts split and $80 fee for each truancy charge, plus "Districts have extra incentive to act diligently because they receive funding based on student attendance." The only loophole to avoid this "crime": Some parents actually withdraw the student from school before such trips then re-enroll them when they return to avoid criminal charges.

It's absurd that the law equates kids playing hooky from schools with their parents taking them on a planned family trip, criminalizing both. A bill passed this session allowing the fee to be waived if it would cause the family economic hardship, but another much-needed fix, at a minimum, would be to accommodate parents who choose to take their kids out of school for short stints because of family travel plans, deaths in the family and other contingencies based on the parents' decisions as opposed to youth skipping school on their own. That's an absurd and pointless story, reinforcing my sense that for school districts this law is more about the money than it is ensuring kids get a good education.

See related Grits posts:

• Whitmire: 'Ticketing students at school teaches the wrong lesson' 
• Jailing parents for student truancy?
• ACLUTX on truancy, youth rights 
• Spanking for truancy? On the limits of corporal punishment in juvie corrections
• Dropouts and crime: Dallas using GPS in pilot truancy program
• Constable pursues truancy make-work to justify staff increase