California may jail parents if kids are truant

[The Northerner]

Talk about parental responsibility. The California Senate just passed a bill that could send parents to jail for up to a year if their kids -- from kindergarten through eighth grade -- miss too much school.

Senate Bill 1317 is actually a public safety measure, according to State Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), because children who don’t attend school regularly or drop out early are more likely to turn to crime.

"Three-quarters of our state inmate population are high school dropouts," Leno was quoted as saying by the Fresno Bee.

According to the Associated Press, parents whose kids miss too much school could be subject to up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, though judges could put the punishment on hold to give parents a chance to get their kids to class.

The Fresno Bee reported that the bill would apply to parents or guardians of children age 6 or older in kindergarten through eighth grade.

To find someone guilty under the bill, prosecutors would have to prove that the parents failed to reasonably supervise and encourage the student to attend school.

Read more: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/parents/california-considers-jailing-p.html

[Gracchus Babeuf]

1. Fascism

Sending kids to jail is fascist ...

[Confusious]

2. Parents to jail

They are sending the parents to jail.

It's still bad. Something does need to be done about the school system and kids though. But not this.

It's a quick out for lazy politians. Biggest group of stupid spineless weenies I have seen in my years.

This group is going to be the new hoovers.

[Catshrink]

3. Read it again - it's the parents they want to send to jail.

[Occulus]

7. Sending people to jail for things other people do is worse.

This will set a horrible precedent if allowed.

[WinkyDink]

29. The "other people" are the parents' responsibility, just as parents currently pay fines for

their children's truancies.

[WinkyDink]

28. Sounds like someone needs to go to school.

[Catshrink]

4. Why not HS age as well?

[dsc]

13. because they are older and presumedly more able to be held

responsible for their own attendance. If an elementary kid is missing a ton of school it almost has to be the parents' fault. In the case of a high school student, the kid could be staying out all night or god knows what.

[Sea Witch]

24. Because it's more difficult to control teenagers behaviors.

There is only so much you can do at that point. Even well raised kids sometimes go off the right path in life, especially during the HS years.

[Jim__]

5. How many people does California have in jail now? How broke is California?

How much does it cost to keep a person in jail for a year? maybe with a little more thought, California can come up with a better solution than putting more people in jail.

[dickthegrouch]

12. Far too Optimistic. Jim

"maybe with a little more thought"

We already have our finest pols on it :sarcasm:

And Meg Whitman is about to buy the governor's office. I'm actually scared of what CA might become if she wins. Damned GOP is determined to turn this whole country into a third world pit.

We still don't have a budget and the people who ought to be in jail are the pols AFAIC. They should have been incarcerated on July 1st until they agree on a budget.

[JBoy]

6. Nothing like having a parent in jail to turbocharge a kid's academic performance.

[Occulus]

8. At that age, it would only have made me resentful and more defiant.

This will have the exact opposite of the desired effect. No good can possibly come of this.

[surrealAmerican]

9. This was my first thought as well.

Jail a kindergartner's parents for not sending her to school, and just how is that supposed to improve her attendance?

[struggle4progress]

18. !

And it's so much easier to supervise your kids from jail

[beyurslf]

10. I wonde rif any of the sponsors of this bill have ever had a truant 8th grader

who skipped school without his or her parent's permission? I have been a foster parent and have had many kids in middle school who skipped out of school and I had little control over it. It would be nice if I could go in and sit with them all day, every day, to make sure they stayed but someone has to work.

[seabeyond]

11. people on du DEMAND that teachers fix, raise, teach, have SUCCESS with ALL kids

regardless of how far from reality it is that our teachers can not only educate all the most difficult kids. kids that have NO interest in learning. we demand that all teachers be successful. without consideration or thinking thru or reality

why the hell are you surprised there would be a law demanding parents control the kids in the same manner, regardless if the parent has no control.

[WolverineDG]

14. so who makes sure the kids go to school

if Mommy & Daddy are in jail? Oh yeah, they're thrown into foster care. Good solution. :eyes:

dg

[pipi_k]

23. Which leads to the question...

what if the foster parents can't get the kid to go to school either?

Do they go to jail too, and the kid gets shipped to another set of foster parents who also can't make the kid go to school, etc. etc.

It's an insane asylum out there and the inmates are running it...

[proud2BlibKansan]

15. They were going to do this in Memphis too

I was there last fall and there was an article in the local paper about it. Don't know if they actually passed the law.

[Odin2005]

16. This is INSANE!

:grr:

[Matariki]

17. How about some family counselling instead?

How will absent (jailed) parents improve the situation? We live in some kind of increasingly fucked up culture. It's depressing.

[krabigirl]

19. wtf...

[HEyHEY]

20. Ah, so it's inspired by Sharia law, is it?

Often parents go to the slammer for what their kids do. What a crock of shit, the last thing and obviously troubled kid needs is their parent thrown in prison.

[Ramulux]

21. I cant express how terrible this is

Let me first say that my family and I have a lot of experience with the school system when it comes to truancy. Now admittedly, my brother missed a lot of school, most of the time he was sick but every once in a while he would fake it or just be like whatever. This ended up causing my parents a lot of problems where they were forced to take off work and go to meetings with the school board and were even threatened with big fines we wouldn't be able to pay.

Now, obviously my brother should have gone to school more and probably could have used some disciplinary action of some kind. The problem was the totalitarian way in which these school boards would enforce these ridiculous punishments. What ended up happening is that my brother was forced to show a doctors note whenever he missed school and what this meant is that even if he was just sick with a regular headache or stomach ache my parents would have to take off work and take him to the doctor so the doctor could just be like "uhhh... take some aspirin?". We are not well-off by any means and these doctors visits cost money that we didn't have. This made it so that towards the end of the year my brother would be forced to go to school while he was absolutely dying because we couldn't afford to take him to the doctor. The point is that the school board basically fucked my family over and cost us huge amounts of money and time that we did not have to spend.

If they are now going to start jailing the parents of kids who are truant often, I am telling you now, it is going to happen to a lot of parents because the system as it exists now is fucked.

[Codeine]

25. No kid needs that much time off.

Assuming there wasn't a core underlying physical ailment, of course. Otherwise he was just being a whiny kid. No child I knew ever needed to stay home more than a few times a year, and certainly not enough for anyone to find it problematic. Sounds like your parents needed to tell him to shut up and go to school.

[JoeyT]

22. Well that's one way to stimulate the economy, I guess.

Every house will have the latest in gaming equipment, designer clothing, and cell phones once they give the kids the ability to send their parents to jail by skipping school.

[seabeyond]

26. the problem schools are facing, is there is actually a significant amount of parents, that don't

parent.

this isnt the answer

fines to parents isnt the answer

but the parents they go after are not "innocent" of wrong doing.

[Luciferous]

27. "children who don’t attend school regularly or drop out early are more likely to turn to crime"

Yeah and putting their parents in jail will keep them on the straight and narrow :eyes:

[cleanhippie]

30. That would be a waste of money.

Truant kids already mean that there is little to no parental involvement with this child or his/her schooling, so jailing the parents will mean very little to the child.

[seabeyond]

31. +1. that is exactly it. it is why i have issue putting blame for raising kids on teachers.... nt