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Op-Ed: Keeping kids in school is the best crime prevention policy

Added on: February 23, 2014

Many people are surprised when I tell them that we have a Truancy Dropout Prevention Unit in the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. “Shouldn’t you be going after the serious criminals instead of kids who skip school?” they ask. The truth is that when it comes to protecting public safety, there is no better strategy than making sure that every child succeeds in school.

Under Washington law, school attendance is mandatory up until age 16. This is part of a package of laws called the “Becca laws” named after a 13-year-old girl who dropped out of school, ran away from home and was murdered by a sex offender in Spokane in the mid-1990s. The Legislature knew, as we know now, that dropping out of school puts young people at an extreme risk of being crime victims and criminal offenders.

In fact, young people who drop out of high school are five times more likely to go to prison than their classmates who earn a high school diploma. People who attend some amount of college are five times less likely to go to prison than those with a high school education. Every layer of education is like a protective blanket that protects the potential of that young person and protects our community.

Washington’s truancy law says that any child who misses seven days of school in a month, or 10 in a quarter, is officially “truant.” Although school districts are required to file a truancy petition at this point, they are also required to take steps to reengage students in school. My office works with school districts throughout King County to host workshops designed to understand why the student is missing school. At the end of the workshop, the school, the student and the parents or guardian sign an agreement designed to reengage the student with an educational track.

The law is a court-based scheme, but I am more interested in having the youth attend school than attend court. Only if a student continues to fail to attend school after a workshop agreement is signed, do we take the next step and pursue a petition with the juvenile court. Fewer than 10 percent of the 1,200 petitions filed last school year ended up in court, where students and their parents faced additional court-based consequences.

Here in the Bellevue School District, the leadership has committed to continued funding for a 2-Tier intervention program which includes a community truancy board. The 2-Tier program was started with grant funds from MacArthur Foundation’s Models for Change, but the district has continued to fund the program even after the grant was completed.

We know that truancy is a red flag that leads to dropping out of school, and increases the chance for risky behaviors, substance abuse, and involvement in the criminal justice system. School districts, teachers, and your prosecuting attorney are working hard to keep students from dropping out of school. It is in the best interest of the child and the community.

Original story: http://www.bellevuereporter.com/opinion/234277011.html

Filed Under: Keeping Kids in School

KING 5: Prosecutor launching program to keep kids in school

Added on: November 24, 2009

SEATTLE – Seventy-five percent of Washington state prison inmates are high school dropouts.

“Being a dropout in the 21st century is not a good idea,” said King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg.

Satterberg says many of them started their troubled legal lives in truancy court.

But a new court ruling says if you’re going to take kids to truancy court, you must provide them with a public defender. The prosecutor doesn’t like that idea. [Read more…]

Filed Under: In the News, Keeping Kids in School

KING 5: A new approach to truancy

Added on: November 13, 2009

I am a reformed truant.

There. I admit it. When I was a kid I hated to go to school. I learned as early as my  kindergarten year at North City Elementary how to get out of going to class. The child of divorced parents, I was a latch-key kid who was responsible even at the age of 5 to get to school on my own and decided I’d rather stay home and watch J.P. Patches. My brush with truancy ended when my mother attended a parent/teacher conference and found out I had missed more than 45 days of instruction. She and the principal, Mr. Honeycutt, took a get tough approach and required me to make an appearance at his office every day to prove I was in school. I was forever changed. [Read more…]

Filed Under: In the News, Keeping Kids in School

Op-Ed: Washington state must get serious about kids with guns

Added on: September 18, 2009

THE 17-year-old boy was hanging out with his friends in a city park. When he saw the police approaching, he tossed his backpack inside a trash can and ran off. When police opened the backpack, they found a loaded .45-caliber handgun among his school books.

An armed juvenile is a threat to the peace of the community, and gun possession by a juvenile is a felony offense when it is not associated with hunting or organized shooting events.

Several weeks later, the teenager stood before a Juvenile Court judge who gave him a standard sentence for his illegal handgun. The judge also sent him a strong message: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Combating Juvenile Gun Violence, In the News

KING 5: Federal Way installs ‘Safe City’ cameras

Added on: August 15, 2009

FEDERAL WAY, Wash. – The City of Federal Way on Wednesday unveiled a new crime fighting system.

The city is the first in the Pacific Northwest to launch the “Safe City” program, which uses cameras to catch criminals.

The police department celebrated the launch of the system with a demonstration. [Read more…]

Filed Under: In the News, Security Cameras

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