U-46 to target top truants

With truancy and high school dropouts on the rise in Kane County, Elgin schools are trying a new strategy to get kids off the streets and back in the classroom.

The five high schools and eight middle schools in Elgin Area School District U-46 are piloting a program this year to identify the top 10 truant students at each school and report those names to local police departments.

The goal is to focus police and school resources on the chronically truant, students who miss about 10 percent of school about 18 days a year without a valid excuse.

“We all believe it will be another tool in the toolbox to track down the kids who are chronically missing class,” Elgin High School Principal Dave Smiley said. “It will help get them back in here so they work toward graduation.”

Truancy in Kane County is at the highest point it has been in a decade, with U-46 accounting for more than a third of those numbers. At the same time, economic pressures may be driving more students to drop out, with Elgin high schools seeing more than double the number of dropouts this year, local education officials have speculated.

State law requires students to be in school from age 7 to 17, when they can decide to drop out. U-46 policy also requires students to have good attendance to get credit for a class even if they're getting good grades in that course.

“We're preparing kids for college and career readiness,” said John Heiderscheidt, U-46's safety coordinator. “You can't just skip work. If you don't show up, there's going to be significant outcomes.”

School officials also believe getting chronically truant students off the street will help reduce daytime crime. They plan to implement the new program by December.

In fighting truancy, U-46 will have some help from the Kane County Regional Office of Education. The office recently received state and federal grants that will allow it to continue providing some of the services that were threatened by delays and cutbacks in state funding.

For U-46, that means two truancy officers from the regional office will work with truant students and their families, visiting homes and schools and finding adult mentors at the schools to keep students on track when the officers can't be there.

“Before, we weren't spread as thin,” said Pat Dal Santo, who directs the truancy program at the regional office. “They worked only on truancy. Now we're working in other areas, but they all affect truancy.”