Gone are the days when a boy slung a homemade pole over the shoulder of tattered bib overalls a la Tom Sawyer and headed for a favorite fishing hole to enjoy a respite from school.
In this era, the modern truant bears no resemblance to Mark Twain's immortal character.
Instead, the child isn't in class for a variety of reasons -- boredom, a sense of hopelessness or, more often, simply because the parent is too busy or uninterested to roll out of bed and get him off to school.
"I think it's attaining a crisis level at this point," West Virginia Supreme Court Chief Justice Robin Davis said in a Friday meeting with The Register-Herald editorial board.
Davis provided a sobering statistic that should give all pause: 80 percent of all the current occupants of West Virginia jails and prisons were at one time truants.
"The bottom line is, if we don't get involved with these children in kindergarten and preschool, then we will see them later on as juveniles or, worse than that, people incarcerated in our prisons," the justice said.
Davis was in Beckley for a truancy seminar involving circuit judges from a wide swatch of the state.
"It's a chronic problem," she said.
"And we define truancy, or the Legislature has, as five unexcused absences. Very quickly, those can rack up. We're talking about children that are missing ... we're seeing statistics where they're missing 20, 30, 40, 50 days a year."
A generation ago, skipping school was unthinkable, because the risk was too great, she recalled.
"If you missed, then you were in trouble when you got home also," she said.
Nowadays, home is the problem, she said, citing one judge's analysis as bored students, a feeling of despair and indifferent parents.
"Drugs are involved in a lot of this," Davis said.
"In many instances, kids want to go to school but have parents who don't care or can't get them to school. Those are the children at the very young ages. What we do see is this trend. And the trend is, if you see preschool or kindergarten children that are not in school, it gets progressively worse."
Davis sees another element that comes into play.
"It is generational," she said. "There is a huge percentage of truants whose parents were dropouts."
For the 2009-2010 school year, for instance, 53 percent of Fayette County's enrollment was labeled as truants. In Raleigh County, the number was 44 percent. Forty-two percent were designated truants in Mercer, while Summers County's rate was 35 percent, McDowell's stood at 51 percent, and Wyoming had a truancy rate of 42 percent.
One statistic relayed to Davis shows 75 percent of truants wind up quitting school.
At times, the problem is one of transportation, she said.
"Sometimes it can be the parent is just too lazy to get up and get the children out the door," she said.
"And then it just becomes a habit in terms of if you don't get your children in school and in kindergarten and grade school, it just progresses and gets progressively worse as children get older. And then they're so far behind, in many instances they become frustrated, become problems in the classroom and it just goes from there."
Davis feels a workable solution is in hand.
"I'm delighted to say we're probably the first state in the country that has attacked this problem head on in a joint effort," the Boone County native said.
Davis said the high court has taken on the problem because, left untreated, it means troubled children wind up in the criminal system.
"We've divided the state into 14 different regions, and our goal is to heighten awareness and to bring all of the stakeholders together, and that's never been done," she said.
Separate programs had been launched by the Department of Health and Human Resources and the education system, but until lately, no one was on the same page.
Davis is bringing county school superintendents, principals, teachers, probation officers, the DHHR and circuit judges with the force of the law behind them to enforce what is on the books. In that vein, the justice said no new legislation is needed from the Legislature.
The idea is to have all 55 counties develop a program compatible with the resources and issues in their respective areas, and tailored specially to their needs.
Throwing an indifferent parent into jail is no solution, she said.
"If you incarcerate the parent, then nobody is going to be there to see that the children get to school," the justice said.
"The better purpose would be to get them into the system so the family can be monitored," she said.
"And if the parent, after a neglect petition has been filed, continues to refuse to see that his or her child goes to school, then the circuit judge has the ability to remove those children from the house and put them in a foster home where they can be properly cared for," Davis said.
Among judges at the Beckley gathering were Circuit Judges Alan Moats of Taylor-Barbour counties, Warren McGraw of Wyoming, Omar Aboulhosn of Mercer, and H.L. Kirkpatrick III, Robert Burnside Jr. and John Hutchison, all of Raleigh County.
"The key is a unified program with all the stakeholders and the circuit judges enforcing the statutes that we currently have in place," Davis said.
Davis applauded the concept of each county devising its own plan of action.
In Greenbrier County, for example, once a child amasses five unexcused absences, a notice that a problem has developed is served on the parent by a sheriff's deputy. Since this idea came online, the truancy rate has been cut in half, she noted.
"How would you like if you were a parent and a deputy sheriff came to your door and served you with a notice?" Davis asked.
"I think I'd sit up and notice."
Davis pointed to "a direct correlation" between drugs and truancy, which, to her, compels officials to jump on the issue now before already crowded jails and prisons are handed more inmates.
All this is being discussed, she reminded the newspaper, while lawmakers are wrestling with overpopulated lockups amid talk that building a new prison for $200 million might prove unavoidable.
"My goodness, if you can alleviate that down the road, think of all the taxpayer dollars we can spend (on other needs), and if we can keep these young children off drugs and they end up becoming productive citizens as opposed to citizens that we, as taxpayers, have to take care of and support, then it's going to be a win-win situation for West Virginia."
Davis sees no reason for anyone not to comprehend the gravity of the matter.
"I just think our goal is to make people aware of the situation," she said.
"And if the people in West Virginia and all the stakeholders take a look at the numbers and statistics, it's a no-brainer."
Copyright 2011 - The Register-Herald, Beckley, W.Va.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
