The people who make these laws are boring tight-asses who spent their youths being too timid to skip an occasional day of school with the cool kids.
Its sad when they wreak their lameness on today's generation of students.
No, no, I'm pretty sure the wealthy white high school kids are not subject to the draconian consequences.
Among the most prolific jailers is Judge John Payton. A self-styled "motivational speaker" and "executive trainer" who dabbles in talk radio, he was first elected judge at 18. His mother was his campaign manager in that race, which won him a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records as the youngest judge ever. He never earned his bachelor's degree or passed the bar
This is from the 2nd link. Look at picture of him --- he's the real-life character portrayed by Chris Farley.
You forgot to sign your name, so you get a zero on the assignment.
How is there no law that judges must be licensed to practice law in their state?
Lower level judges are still often not lawyers. In other states, they get called Justice of the Peace or Magistrate or Person Who Gets Overturned Often.
Yet another one of those "time for Halfordismo or whatever we're calling a benevolent dictatorship" stories.
It's striking to see what the good guys in the Texas judicial system sound like.
How students fare in truancy court varies widely county to county and judge to judge. Dallas County Judge Boyd Richie declared at a recent legislative hearing that he would never jail a student for failing to pay a fine. "I work across the hall from another judge who trained me to begin with, and he doesn't do it either," Richie said. "And if he thought I was, he'd take me outside and take me out to the woodshed, and I'd have a few bruises 'fore I came back."
Forgive the analogy, but it reminds me of this.
4: Moby's a tough grader. Guess, it's back to kindergarten for me.
We've got equally draconian attendance policies here in Arkansas, but (at least!) we don't fine kids for missing school, so that's something, I guess.
We do, however, have a "bad" school you can get sent to, after you've been sent to and exhausted your chances with in-school suspension. (We jokingly call it the "prison school," but it's just the school for habitual offenders.) And from *that* school, if you fuck up at that school, I mean, the next stop *is* actual prison. So IDK if we're doing THAT much better.
Dr. Skull, who is subbing in our local school system, has kicked kids out of class at the prison school more than once. They have to be doing pretty horrible things to be sent to court from the prison school. He sent one kid down to the office for physically attacking him, and even that kid just got time in the resource room (like a giant padded time out room).
Generally, you do your time at the prison school -- a week or so -- and you go back to your own school.
But yeah, some kids do go on to actual prison, apparently. Or they can.
Oh -- I meant to link my own post on our draconian attendance policies. Here it is: http://delagar.blogspot.com/2015/02/attendance-policies-venting-post.html
At my school, a kid in the 3rd grade pulled a knife on the teacher. They sent him somewhere more specialized.
They sent him somewhere more specialized
The School of the Americas?
Huh. Now I am hoping "Mom called me in sick" counts as an excused absence as I've otherwise had no qualms about allowing Rory a day off when she's needed one.
Go eat a dick, Texas truancy laws. (Couldn't resist, it's one of my favorite perry bible fellowships.)
14 - it does for two days. For the third day you need a doctors note.
Technically you're a doctor, though, right?
Here in Arkansas, Mom called me in sick does *not* count as an excused absence. You gotta have an actual excuse from a clinic or a medical doctor. I found this out the hard way. My note is no good at all.
We do, however, get five days of what they call "parental permission" before they start sending our kids to SDC, which is like in-school jail.
You do two days of SDC for every day of unexcused absence. This is until you've racked up (I think?) two weeks of unexcused absence. Then it's off to the prison school.
Does it help if you have a husband to sign with you?
I say just drop them off at school sick. It's attendance that counts, not being able to do anything while you're there. And after having to deal with sick children and epidemics the school will probably reconsider the policy.
18 Professor in the streets, Doctor in the sheets.
22 is a TERRIBLE idea because then they get sent home sick and have to stay home for 24 more hours, when otherwise you would have just had one disrupted work day.
You can keep them home when they're sick, and have it be an excused absence, BUT you have to actually take them to the clinic.
This means (a) you have to stay home from work yourself and (b) you have to take them to the clinic -- when they're sick -- and pay (at my clinic) a $25.00 co-pay (or $40.00 if the regular clinic is full and you have to go to the walk-in).
All this, for a note. Because almost always, the doc is going to say, yeah, that's a virus. Fluids and rest and Motrin.
Well, if we can't have a poll tax, penalizo families with no fulltime carer and less than platinum health care will have to do.
Not that we need anything more that a parent's note for a missed day of school, but our doctor would really rather not see your kid for that kind of thing. You call and they transfer you to a nurse who tells you what do to.
Right, what it really ends up doing is penalizing poor kids.
SDC is in-school detention. So, you miss one day of class because you're out with an unexcused illness.
Then you come back to school -- now you have to spend two days in SDC to work off that one missed day.
So now you've missed 3 days of class (because you don't work in SDC, you're not allowed to: you're required to just SIT THERE, staring straight ahead of yourself, for the entire 7 hour school day) for one day of illness.
Rich kids, this doesn't happen to, because their parents can afford the co-pay, and have a mom at home to ferry them to the doctor as well.
Also, teachers are NOT required to let kids make up work they have missed for unexcused absences, which SDC counts as. So if you miss tests or important lecture notes or lab work during those 3 days, that's just your tough luck.
It doesn't need saying, but Arkansas sounds just totally insane. Is the point making Texas look good?
I kind of enjoy these revelations in a "the South is backwards in ways I never dreamed" kind of way.
Truancy citations are pretty restricted here. The district has to take reasonable steps to address the issue first, and you can only cite when they're 12-15 and the GPA has to be under a 3.5.
I *think* the insane attendance policies here in Arkansas are an insane overreaction to our appalling high school graduation rates.
We're a little better now, but we had high school graduation rates in the mid-70% for awhile there (lower for black/Latino/poor students). So this push to make sure every student attends school (almost) every day is intended to address that.
Of course, as we can see, what it can end up doing is penalizing the very students it is aimed at helping.
Graduation rate is up to 81% now, btw. Still lower for poor/black/Latino.
DATA: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014391.pdf
It's good to prepare kids for careers without paid time off. Now they should have the school week on five days per week, randomly announced sunday night.
So this push to make sure every student attends school (almost) every day is intended to address that.
On the state level here, it's tied to that. On the local level here , it's tied to funding. The school gets funded according to daily attendance records, so truancy costs them money.
Building on 33, it's important for kids to understand that their presence is valuable because it's profitable for the institution.
"On the local level here , it's tied to funding. The school gets funded according to daily attendance records, so truancy costs them money."
I think this might be true here also. And I believe funding is also tied to graduation rates. So, yep, keeping asses in chairs is profitable.
I wonder if that wouldn't just lead to more negotiating power on their part. I mean, given the current levels of standardized testing and how they impact schools and individual teachers you'd think there'd be some serious power behind collective student actions right? "Look school, if you don't bump the effective starting time of school down to 8:30 in the morning then all the sophomores will completely fail on the next Standardized School Assessment Test. We wouldn't want that, would we?"