School Days School Days

The school district where I work has something called the School Attendance Review Board, or SARB.  When a child misses an unusual amount of school, whether from "ditching" or illness or family emergency, the parents are asked to attend a meeting at the district office with representatives from the school administration, the local police department, counselors, and one of the school nurses.

 

Often the parent says that the child is too sick to attend to school, but that is rarely true.  People lie like crazy -- outrageous lies -- and typically the reality is that they just don't want to make the effort to get the kid to school.

 

Sometimes the parent says: "I can't make her go... she doesn't like it."  The child might be 7 or 8  years old.  The truth is that the parent doesn't want to get up that early, or the parent enjoys the kid's company, or the parent has one older kid looking after one or more younger kids.

 

If the child's attendance doesn't improve, the case is turned over to the District Attorney.

 

It's a difficult program to maintain.  The parents are often hostile and almost always lie.  It's time consuming for the staff, and most of the kids are doomed anyway.  Most school districts don't even bother trying.

 

I used to ditch school.  I missed so much of the 9th grade that I could never remember which locker was mine.  My parents rarely mentioned it, although my mother would occasionally cry.  One time my father asked me where I went when I didn't go to school.  I told him it was none of his business.  We left it at that, and my mother cried.

 

In the 10th grade, I simply stopped attending.  I skipped more than half of the first semester.   My parents never mentioned anything, although my mother sometimes cried.

 

When I went to class on the second day of the second semester there was a note for me to go see the Vice Principal.

 

The Vice Principal told me that I was a gracious young lady.  He said that I gave every appearance of being a good person, as I sat there with my hands folded in my lap, but that in reality I wasn't a good person.  I was walking a fence.  It was for me to decide which side I would fall to -- the good or the bad.  He said, "Usually when a student misses so much school there's a problem at home.  Is there a problem at home?"

 

I told him there wasn't. 

 

He sent me to spend the second semester of the 10th grade in a class called Guidance.  I was told that if I didn't attend every day I would be expelled.  For some reason, I cared.

 

In Guidance I spent the entire school day in one room, with a group of developmentally disabled and/or emotionally disturbed students.  Our only curriculum was to read and summarize three articles from the L.A. Times each day.  Beyond that, we watched television.

 

At 10:00 AM each morning we watched reruns of "The Love Boat". 

 

I read a lot. 

 

I tried not to look at anyone.

 

A young woman named Samella, who had an oddly shaped forehead and would tell long, detailed, stories about having sex with dogs, believed that I was evil.  When I looked at her she would scream and hide behind chairs or sometimes underneath a table.

 

My parents never mentioned anything about Guidance to me.  I went there, and I came home.  Not a word was said.  I didn't miss a day of school all semester.

 

On the last day of the 10th grade I walked home from school and went to my mother, who was lying in bed.  It was clear that she hadn't gotten up that day.  She had been crying.

 

I sat down on her bed and talked about the Guidance program for the first time.  Our entire conversation is below.

 

Me: I've been in this thing called Guidance all year.  It was really hard.  It was terrible.  Did you know about it?

 

Her: (crying) Yes.  We thought it was the best thing.  Don't you think it's been good for you?

 

Me:  No.

 

I'm so glad that this school district makes an effort to get these children in school.  When the nurses come back from SARB meetings with stories of parents who seem to have no interest in making their children go to school -- who claim that they CANNOT make their kids go to school -- I sometimes feel a weight on my chest.  I think about the children.  I think about how I felt, then... how I believed that all of my choices were my own.  I believed that I was choosing to fail.

 

I can see my mother crying, crying...

 

At the end of the 11th grade I dropped out of school, after failing every class in the fourth quarter.  I asked my parents first.  They said it was okay.