COMMENTARY: Questions of truancy law's value

Skipping school was once a harmless prank that could land you in the principal's office for a lecture and a few hours of detention. Since my dad was the principal of my high school, I was rarely tempted to go AWOL. There wasn't much room for bad behavior in our small town anyway, patrolled as it was by one deputy sheriff and a network of vigilant gossips.

Oceanside's daytime loitering ordinance makes cutting classes no longer a laughing matter. It would impose a $250 fine on the Ferris Buellers of the seaside city. Bueller was the main character in the 1986 movie, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," chronicling the comic adventures of a class-cutting teen. This merry prankster, of course, was no threat to the community.

The proposed new law passed the city council's first reading easily, by a 4-1 vote, despite an unusually shaky case made for it in a staff report. Prepared by Police Chief Frank McCoy and City Manager Peter Weiss, the report failed to include any evidence of success for similar laws adopted by three other North County cities several years ago.

Instead, the report cherry-picks case studies included in an outdated 1996 U.S. Education Department "Manual to Combat Truancy."

In Rohnert Park, the only California city cited as having a model school/police initiative, there's no daytime loitering law. Police simply enforce state law by arresting truants and returning them to school. Unlike Oceanside's ordinance, first and second offenders are not penalized with a fine. Chronic truants are referred to social service agencies or juvenile court.

Oceanside police complain that the state's truancy law has no teeth in it for first offenders. The school district's Student Attendance Review Board, with representation from the school district, police, justice system and social services, works only with chronic truants. According to its proponents, the new law will allow for earlier identification and intervention.

That's where the trouble begins.

How will police differentiate between truants who pose a threat to the community and occasional pranksters, like Ferris Bueller, who are otherwise good students, unlikely to embark on a life of crime? The ordinance declares violators "may (emphasis mine) be punished by a fine not exceeding $250."

If fines are optional, will cops tend to issue citations only to those who are deemed to be troublemakers because of their personal appearance? If so, that may say more about the officer than the young person's risk to the community.

Maybe the real reason for the law is simply a matter of money. Schools like it because their state funding depends on daily attendance. The police like it because they think a stiff fine will be a cost-free deterrent. According to the staff report, the police department "does not anticipate additional costs to enforce the proposed ordinance." That's only if there are fewer truants to chase.

If early intervention is indeed the goal, it's hard to believe it can be achieved with no cost to anyone but the students caught in the net.

North County Times columnist Richard J. Riehl lives in Carlsbad. Contact him at .


