Yonkers Truancy
The Yonkers Juvenile Crime Enforcement Coalition (YJCEC) identified truancy as one of the highest-priority local issues and created an ad-hoc workgroup, the Yonkers Truancy Reduction Strategy Group (YTRSG), to develop a plan to reduce truancy using existing resources, which could be supplemented by additional resources when and if those resources become available. The YTRSG includes representatives from the Yonkers Public Schools, Yonkers Police Department, DSS, Family Court, Probation Department, Westchester County Law Department, and the District Attorney’s Office. The YTRSG has held a series of meetings to assess the need, discuss potential strategies, and develop a plan that is outlined below.
The YJCEC’s Truancy Reduction Strategy Group has developed a new procedure that we began implementing in Yonkers in September 2007. Under the new procedure Yonkers school personnel will investigate all cases where students in grades 1-8 have 15+ total unexcused absences in a single school year. School personnel will investigate to determine if there are any extenuating reasons for the absences, e.g. a long trip abroad or an extended illness, and will also review the student’s school records to determine if the absences are having negative academic impacts, as evidenced by low or failing grades, being held back, etc. If the investigation documents a negative academic impact and no extenuating circumstances, school personnel will file a formal Educational Neglect report to the New York State Child Abuse Hotline, which, if accepted by NYS, will be referred back to the Westchester DSS Child Protective Services (CPS) unit for investigation and appropriate action.
The short-term impact of our new policy will be to dramatically increase the number of Educational Neglect reports filed from Yonkers, beginning in October 2007. We estimate that successful implementation of our new policy will result in 363-479 additional Educational Neglect reports from Yonkers during our first year of implementation. This range represents an increase of 71% to 94% over the 508 Educational Neglect reports filed in Yonkers in 2005-2006. We estimate that this increased caseload will require 8-10 new CPS workers in Yonkers to handle the increased caseload. Family Court and Probation would also experience increased caseloads as the new cases make their way through the system.
The potential long-term impacts of our new policy are enormous. If properly implemented, our new procedure could identify and help bring early intervention services to hundreds of high-risk youth in high-risk families who would otherwise in most cases float through the system unaided until they emerged again into public view as teenage delinquents, dropouts, and criminals. The early intervention services provided will not be able to save every student or turn around every dysfunctional family, but they offer our best hope for long-term reductions in school failure, violence, drug abuse, and crime in Yonkers.
The Social and Personal Impacts of Chronic Truancy
This excerpt from the 2/12/08 draft Juvenile Justice Strategy and Action Plan prepared by the Yonkers Juvenile Crime Enforcement Coalition (YJCEC) gives an overview of the social and personal impacts of chronic truancy.
Tool Kit For Creating Your Own Truancy Reduction Program, OJJDP,2007
The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) published this very detailed and useful “Tool Kit for Creating Your Own Truancy Reduction Program in 2007.
Flowchart of Yonkers' Proposed Educational Neglect Reporting Process for Chronic Truants
