Delaware County Toughens Truancy Policy

DELAWARE, Ohio—Delaware County Prosecutor Dave Yost announced a new policy on truancy Thursday that carries a tougher charge.

Parents who fail to make sure their children are in school could face a charge of Contributing to the Delinquency of a minor, which carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Previously, parents had been charged with Failure to Send.

Yost says it will send a strong message to parents that they need to send their kids to school. He says many students who are continuously absent now end up in court as adults.

“It’s unlikely that anybody is going to go to jail for six months,“ Yost said. “There’s been a sense in the educational community as well as the justice community for some time that this failure to send charge just really doesn’t have enough teeth in it.“

Under the new plan, mediation is scheduled after ten days unexcused. At 12 days, the prosecutor’s office sends a warning letter.

Fifteen days of unexcused absence results in a complaint filed on the parent for Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor. The child is charged with being a Delinquent Truant.

Delaware City Schools had 45 students truant in the 2008-2009 school year.

The Delaware Area Career Center had 16 truancies. Big Walnut Schools had 8. Olentangy Schools had 6. Buckeye Valley had 5. The Prosecutors Office filed 61 failure to send charges last year.

Buckeye Valley Supt. John Schiller and Olentangy Asst. Supt. Linda Martin say although their district problems may not seem that bad now, they want to get as many children into class as possible and help to avoid bigger problems later.

“You have to try things before you say will it work or not. So I applaud the office for trying to put something in place that maybe makes a message or sends a message and puts something out there for parents to pay attention to,“ Martin said.

“Obviously, in the younger grades there’s much more parent direct involvement with the students. So to be honest, the higher up they get, sometimes the more difficult it is,“ Schiller said.

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