FCAA postcard: It's not my fault I'm not in school

Getting kids to class
Nesbitt, Jennifer. Newark Advocate, Nov. 26, 2006.

NEWARK -- Newark Truancy Officer Brooke Wolfe starts her day in the small office at Wilson Middle School occupied by the attendance staff.

But once the middle school attendance reports are faxed in, she's up and running for the day,visiting students at school who have problems with attendance or tardiness and visiting homes to talk to parents whose kids should be in school but aren't.

Wolfe is one of Newark City Schools' three truancy officers. She covers excessive absences inthe middle schools, while Attendance Supervisor Bobbi Nash covers the elementary schools andOfficer Jerry Martin covers the high school.

Their job is to intervene when students miss too much school and to file truancy charges against the students or their parents when absences go too far.

"We do have parents that actually go to jail," Wolfe said.

The hope of the truancy officers, however, is to stop the problem of chronic absenteeism before it gets to that point.

A recent school day for Wolfe, like most other days, meant visiting students at the three middle schools and knocking on the doors of students who were not in school that day after habitually being absent.

Starting at Lincoln Middle School, Wolfe spoke with one student who became so combative thatNewark police had to be called.

Another girl confided in Wolfe she was miserable in her home life and had been cutting her arms and attempting suicide.

Wolfe said the two students' different reactions chronicled what she generally sees: Students either shut down and refuse to talk to her or they open up.

"There are some kids who really open and, when they do, you just really want to reach out to them as much as you can," Wolfe said. "And the ones that put on the bulletproof vest, you really could help them if they would let their guard down."

After talking to nearly 10 students, both ones whom she had documented as having attendance problems and ones whom the school secretaries recommended, Wolfe was off to make home visits.

This meant hunting down addresses across Newark and knocking on doors to talk face-to-facewith parents.

"We go into these homes completely blind to what's behind the door," Wolfe said.

Knocking on doors that particular day, she found students who were questionably sick, houses so dirty they could be smelled from the doorway and foster parents whose absent ward had beenmissing for days.

Often, the conditions the officers encounter when they visit homes explains why students aren't in school, Wolfe said.

"What we see is really hard -- kids with no electricity, and their parents are on drugs. It's no wonder they're not in school," Wolfe said. "They're just trying to survive."

In those cases, Wolfe said her job can go beyond just talking to parents and students.

For students who miss school for lice, the officers occasionally will do the lice treatments that parents won't.

At the beginning of this school year, Wolfe took one girl shopping to buy clothes and shoes because her parents said she missed the first two weeks of school because she had none.

"Those things are what's really hard," Wolfe said.

But those things do make a difference, the officers said. Last year, out of the 1,119 students referred to the office, nine parents and 37 students had charges filed against them.

Nash said often the success comes from talking to parents who have had problems getting students to school but get them straightened out.

In one case, Nash said a fifth-grader who missed so many days of school last year that charges were filed has missed only a half day of school this year, and his mother has noticed the success.

"He's so much more connected with what's going on at school ... he's healthy and happy," Nash said.

Martin said it's those cases that make the often-difficult jobs of the truancy officers worthwhile.

"If we can improve one person out of 10, it makes us feel like we made a difference," Martin said.

When students don't want to go to school no matter what, Wolfe said the job of the truancy officer is often the easier one.

"We only have to get them to school," Wolfe said. "They actually have to make them learn."