Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Sun editorial:

Taking on truancy

School District should not have to resort to incentives to get children back to class

One of the toughest challenges facing the Clark County School District is how to get truants to return to the classroom. Typically those children either lack sufficient parental supervision or are forced to miss school because their families suffer extreme economic hardships.

The 2007 Nevada Legislature sought to tackle this issue by requiring the school districts in Clark and Washoe counties to establish school attendance councils consisting of education, social service and law enforcement professionals. The councils were to help implement programs to reduce truancy and monitor excessive absences of pupils within the school districts.

The list of incentives Clark County schools are using to lure truants back to class, as summarized Thursday by the district’s School Attendance Council in its inaugural annual report, is certainly creative.

As reported Monday by Emily Richmond in the Las Vegas Sun, the incentives include prize drawings and pizza parties. Some of the rewards, such as raffle tickets for prizes, go to individual students. Other incentives reward students collectively for outstanding attendance.

It is one thing to reward students who do well in school, just as employers give bonuses and promotions to deserving employees. But the School District walks a fine line when it uses tax dollars to, in the words of School Board member Ruth Johnson, “bribe kids to come to school.”

Children who need such incentives to go to class will continue to demand them to stay in school. That is no way to prepare them for adult life.

The attendance council can and should encourage individual schools to do a better job of reaching out to parents and the appropriate community agencies to get these children back in school without having to resort to gimmicks.

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