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By  D. Scott Hughes, Executive Director Alliance For Education

At their last Board meeting the Caddo School Board approved $60,000 to help continue funding a truancy prevention program through Volunteers For Youth Justice (VYJ) for the remainder of the school year.  We want to applaud this decision and encourage expansion of this partnership between the Caddo Schools and the VYJ ACT Now! truancy program.  ACT Now!, which stands for “Abolish Caddo Truancy Now!” has been an ideal model of how the community can work together to find a better solution to current day issues.  It also has been an extremely successful and beneficial partnership to the Caddo School system.

The project began as a series of luncheons hosted by the Learning To Finish campaign, a partnership of the Community Foundation and the Alliance For Education, around the idea of how we can all work together to keep more children in school.  The data on drop outs was fairly clear that truancy is an early indicator a child is getting into academic trouble.  The data is also clear that children who do not attend school often develop many other social and legal problems that further impede their ability to learn and graduate.  Monthly lunches were held and attended by representatives from Caddo Schools, the Juvenile Courts, Caddo Juvenile Services, the District Attorney’s office, the Caddo Sherriff’s office and the Shreveport Police Department, the Caddo Parish Commission, area non-profits who are active in truancy prevention and other community partners.  Key was the personal participation of Juvenile Judge David Matlock, District Attorney Charles Scott and Superintendent Gerald Dawkins.

The community team worked to develop a new model using the existing parts we already had in Caddo Parish.  Each part in the process brought something to table and found ways to improve efficiency and outcomes.  In the end the group selected VYJ as the best provider to serve in the critical role of program administrator and be the home for the expansion of more FINS (Families In Need of Services) Officers, who serve as officers to the court and are vital to working with truant children.  The Community Foundation agreed to fund the first year of operations with a $208,000 grant to seed the program and allow it to prove its success.  And succeed it has.

Since the program began in January 2009 through March 2010 the program has received 4,355 truancy conference referrals.  When the program began it was common practice to see participation at the initial conference level, the best place to intervene the fastest, hovering at the 10% level.  Since the new process has been put in place VYJ has seen this number steadily increase to a level that now reaches 65% participation at the initial conference with an overall rate over the 15 months now up to 40%, or four times what is was previously.  What does this mean in real terms?  As reported in The Times, this means a 2-point rise in Caddo daily attendance, or about 1,000 more students a day who weren’t in school a year ago now attending.  This rate is as much as a 10-point rise in alternative schools.  The program is working and children are attending school.  That ultimately translates to more children learning and prepared to succeed in life, fewer social and legal issues for children, and yes, dare we say better test scores.  It is a win-win-win for the children of Caddo Parish.

It is worth noting this program is a great partnership that expands on all the existing good work being done in Caddo.  Rutherford House continues to offer high quality services for the schools it serves.  The Caddo Schools Child Welfare and Attendance Office continues to reach out to help children and Caddo Parish and the City of Shreveport continue to fund FINS officers to help address the problem.  The decision of the Caddo School Board to make this commitment to help push truancy efforts in Caddo Parish even higher is a strong commitment to help children.  It is a commitment that will continue to pay huge returns for years to come.  The Caddo Schools/VYJ program is a great model of finding a way to improve services, help children and build strong community partnerships.