A truancy intervention initiative pioneered by San Antonio’s Municipal Court has won fans in the Northside and San Antonio school districts, but political jockeying is slowing its spread to the rest of the city.
In 2010, Municipal Court Presiding Judge John Bull created a truancy docket at his downtown courthouse and took on a backlog of cases from the County’s Justice of the Peace courts, where school districts often dumped them by the hundreds well past the state’s required filing deadline.
Last year, Bull hired Victor Vinton, a retired educator and principal to serve as juvenile case administrator, and the court’s truancy team began enforcing a newly adopted state law that requires districts to create an intervention plan and show they’ve attempted to implement it with the student and the student’s guardian before filing a case in court. Vinton kicked back incomplete files, and the court threatened to reject cases that weren't filed on time. Their goal is to identify truancy problems as early as possible, address the underlying causes, and get kids back in school and out of the criminal-justice system.
Northside Independent School District embraced the new strategy, and hired a lead attendance officer who works directly with families in the courtroom. State law also allows judges to assign truancy defendants to community service and tutoring programs in place of fines, and the court’s orders usually include a schedule of life-skills classes, and fines and fees are often waived if a student successfully completes the programs and stops skipping school.
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