APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Students wrongfully cited, courts not following due process… that’s what lead to the shutdown of Appleton Area School District’s truancy court.
Now, it’s time to replace it.
Since the truancy court system shut down, a truancy task force had to be created to come up with a replacement.
The task force will present replacement solutions at a school board meeting Monday night.
“Police wouldn’t write a citation, the kids would not get referred to the circuit court system. They would possibly be getting help from the county,” suggested Ronna Swift.
She is a truancy task force member and says any replacement option should leave court out.
“Now what we have in place as a task force is a lot of referral set-ups and everything but still the option to do the judicial supervision and I don’t want judges involved,” she said.
Swift, along with the rest of the task force, will present three options to the school board Monday night.
The first lets the school work with the student, without court involvement.
The second lets a truancy board refer the student to the county.
The last leaves a truancy board to decide between a county referral or a citation.
But one school board member disagrees with that last option.
“We must first address underlying issues,” said Alvin Dupree. He believes citations shouldn’t be considered at all.
“If the only issue is truancy… the answer is not to give heavy fines and ultimately lock them up in shelter care or a detention facility which is still doing what? Taking them out of school anyway,” he explained.
Dupree is just one of the seven board members expected to vote on those options but believes that a vote should be tabled.
He’s calling for more engagement, in hopes to present better options than the ones expected to be voted on.
“I think that there should be a bigger time frame which the community is actually allowed to engage in,” said Dupree.
The truancy task force will present those three options to the Appleton Area School District Board at a meeting Monday night.
The meeting will be held at the Appleton School District building at 4:30 p.m.
Board members are expected to vote around 6 p.m.
