STRANDED STUDENTS

Friday, Dec. 28, 2007 | 7:16 a.m.

They sit in a quiet row in the office of Helen Jydstrup Elementary School at 3:40 p.m., swinging their legs and browsing through books.

A second grader isn't sure who is supposed to pick him up that day, only that he's been told to stand by the front entrance when the dismissal bell rings. Another boy tells the office staff he's waiting for his uncle, a high school student who shows up more than an hour late.

A girl keeps her gaze fixed on the front door, looking anxiously down the hallway for her daddy.

The office staff run down the list of emergency contacts in each student's file, but again and again they reach only cell phones out of service, wrong numbers and voice-mail boxes.

"It's the daily ritual," said Andrea Kilpatrick, assistant principal at Jydstrup, which is south of Tropicana Avenue between Jones and Decatur boulevards. "Sometimes it's the same kids over and over again."

The children are known as the "leftovers," students stranded on campus because no one has shown up to retrieve them at the end of the school day.

And it happens more than 10,000 times each school year, amounting to about one of every 15 elementary school students.

To be sure, this isn't a uniquely Southern Nevada phenomenon. But Clark County appears to be one of the few large school districts that's formulated a central office policy and response to the issue.

The district's procedure for handling leftovers is straightforward. After attempting to reach a parent or guardian, the school staff asks the attendance office for help. One of the district's attendance officers is dispatched to the home address. If no one is there, a notice is left on the door and the officer takes the child to a Boys & Girls Club.

Last year, the Clark County School District delivered more than 700 students to Boys & Girls Clubs for safekeeping after family members could not be located. The Boys & Girls Club provides supervision free to the district as part of a reciprocal agreement. After 7 p.m., the student is taken to the county-run children's shelter.

In a handful of cases, the district reports suspected neglect to the authorities. But thousands of other situations are resolved when the attendance officer locates a family member to retrieve the child before the school office closes for the day.

The district's attendance office fields more than 200 such calls each week, enough to keep its 24 officers busy from 3:15 p.m. on. Nearly all the calls are for elementary school students, although the occasional middle schooler who misses the bus figures into the mix.

The number of students "left over" represents a relatively small percentage of the overall elementary school enrollment, which is about 150,000. But the problem is severe enough that the attendance officers stock their cars with preprinted cards to leave on the doors of homes where no one answers. The officer fills in the appropriate name and checks a box to indicate the Boys & Girls Club location where the child will be taken.

"Nevada law states that negligent treatment occurs if a child is without proper supervision because of the faults or habits of the person responsible for his welfare," the card reads. "Nevada law also requires school officials to report any knowledge or suspicion of child abuse and neglect. Therefore, should failure to pick up your child continue, this can and will result in a report to Child Protective Services."

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second-largest, officials said they were not aware of enough students being left at the end of the day to merit central office involvement. In Chicago, the nation's third-largest district, students have been left over enough in recent years to warrant a new policy by the Board of Education. Chicago's principals are required to assign two staff members to stay with the student, and if a parent or guardian cannot be located by 5 p.m. the school calls 911 and the police take over. But no statistics are kept because it's still a relatively minor issue, said a Chicago Public Schools spokesman.

So, are Clark County parents really more forgetful than their counterparts in other parts of the country? Or are there other considerations?

Keith Schwer, executive director of the Center for Economic Research at UNLV, said two factors came immediately to mind.

"This is a 24-hour town, so work schedules are a little bit more hectic," Schwer said. "Also, we have a higher percentage of single-parent households, which means you may not have someone to help you pick up the slack."

At the same time, some of it "is just downright neglect," Schwer said. "There's no way around that."

Another problem is the transiency of the community, said Donna Coleman, co-founder of the Children's Advocacy Alliance, a nonprofit group that studies youth issues statewide.

"There's no extended family," Coleman said. "Here, everyone is isolated, they work crazy hours. Add in the gambling and substance abuse that's going on and you have a serious crisis."

The east region has the most leftovers, followed by the northeast region. Those two areas also lead the district in student transiency, with about 40 percent of students attending at least two schools within a single academic year.

Pam Gunter, senior attendance officer for the district, said calls from elementary schools take up the bulk of her staff's time in the afternoon hours.

"At 4 p.m. we're still looking for a parent for the kid who showed up at school that morning with a 104-degree fever," Gunter said.

That means requests for help from middle and high schools - to drive home a sick student or deliver files, for example - typically go to the end of the line.

This year the number of attendance officers jumped to 24 from 19 last year, but that's still a ratio of one officer for every 13,000 students in the district. The industry average is one attendance officer per 10,000 students, Gunter said. She would like to see Clark County's ratio lowered to one officer for every 8,000 students, but realizes that's unlikely in light of the governor's proposed cuts to K-12 education and the districtwide hiring freeze expected to follow.

"We are absolutely shorthanded," Gunter said. "I just wish there was enough money out there to give all the schools the support they deserve."

The leftovers speak to a problem that goes beyond the responsibility of the school district: the need for more front-end services for families, such as parenting classes, said Coleman, of the Children's Advocacy Alliance.

"There are a lot of kids who don't need to be removed from their homes (by authorities)," she said. "Their parents just need a little help understanding what's proper."