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A RESOLUTION
21-234
IN THE COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
October 6, 2015
To declare the existence of an emergency with respect to the need to amend An Act To
provide for compulsory school attendance, for the taking of a school census in the District of Columbia, and for other purposes to clarify that, for purposes of determining whether the referral of a minor student 14 years of age through 17 years of age to the Court Social Services Division of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and to the Office of the Attorney General Juvenile Section for the accrual of 15 unexcused absences during School Year 2015-2016 is required, the term unexcused absence may mean an unexcused full school day absence.
RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, That this resolution may be cited as the “Truancy Referral Emergency Declaration Resolution of 2015”.
Sec. 2. (a) Over the past 5 years, the Council of the District of Columbia has passed 3 laws: the Safe Children and Safe Neighborhoods Educational Neglect Mandatory Reporting Amendment Act of 2010, effective October 26, 2010 (D.C. Law 18-242; 57 DCR 7555); the South Capitol Street Memorial Amendment Act of 2012, effective June 7, 2012 (D.C. Law 19-141; 59 DCR 3083); and the Attendance Accountability Amendment Act of 2013, effective September 19, 2013 (D.C. Law 20-17; 60 DCR 14501); with the goal of reducing chronic truancy.
(b) In particular, the Attendance Accountability Amendment Act of 2013 requires educational institutions to refer minor students 14 through 17 years of age to the Court Social Services (“CSS”) Division of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and to the Office of the Attorney General (“OAG”) Juvenile Section after the student has accrued 15 unexcused absences within a school year. The goal of this mandate was to facilitate interagency coordination and to ensure that students who continuously miss full days of school receive the services and interventions that they need.
(c) However, students who miss more than 20% of the school day, and thus are not “present,” as defined by section 2199 of Title 5-A of the District of Columbia Municipal Regulations, are being counted as absent. Because many of the District’s high schools operate on a block schedule, this results in a student being considered absent if he or she misses one period of the school day even though he or she may be present the rest of the school day. If this occurs on 15 or more days, the student is referred to CSS and OAG, as the statute requires a referral after 15 unexcused absences. Thus, a student may be referred to CSS or OAG even though he or she has not been chronically truant but instead has been chronically tardy. This has resulted in over-referrals to CSS, thereby saturating the system and diverting limited resources away from those students and families that are truly in need of CSS or OAG intervention.
(d) Chronic truancy is inherently different from chronic tardiness. Chronic truancy involves continual and complete absence from school, often signaling other issues, whether they be social, emotional, mental, familial, or academic, in a child’s life, and thus necessitates a myriad of interventions from various District agencies. Chronic tardiness, on the other hand, may signal that a student needs aid in getting to school but does not necessitate serious intervention, such as referral to CSS and OAG.
(e) Without this immediate change, chronic truancy and chronic tardiness will continue to be conflated, thereby resulting in students who are not truly truant being identified as such and leading to their involvement with the juvenile justice system. While schools should work with youth who display a pattern of chronic tardiness, such behavior does not rise to the level of requiring a referral to the courts or to OAG. Thus, an emergency exists to clarify that for the purposes of CSS and OAG referral, an educational institution may ignore the “80/20” rule and consider an unexcused absence to be an unexcused full school day absence.
Sec. 3. The Council of the District of Columbia determines that the circumstances enumerated in section 2 constitute emergency circumstances making it necessary that the Truancy Referral Emergency Amendment Act of 2015 be adopted after a single reading.
Sec. 4. This resolution shall take effect immediately.
