Bad news about truancy

Looks like a bad problem is getting much, much worse. Check out this report from the Examiner: Students increasingly skipping school

At the halfway point of the school year, San Francisco schools have seen a near 80 percent jump from last fall in the number of students who are chronically truant, despite a pledge by The City’s district attorney to get tough on parents who neglect their children’s education.

In October, District Attorney Kamala Harris vowed to prosecute parents of children who continuously missed school days without a note or phone call. But with nearly twice the amount of chronically truant students reported last fall from previous years, it appears as if parents aren’t listening and Harris isn’t prosecuting.

There were 528 students who missed 20 days of school between Sept. 1, 2007, and Jan. 1, according to the San Francisco Unified School District. That’s up from 294 for the same period in 2006 and 158 in 2005.

As I said back in October, nothing that anyone has done or proposed doing is in any way commensurate with the problem. This is a crisis that needs to be addressed with greater urgency.