KAMLOOPS (CANADA)
National Public Radio - NPR [Washington DC]
August 18, 2024
By David Folkenflik
NPR’s David Folkenflik speaks with Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat about their new documentary, “Sugarcane,” about Indian residential schools in Canada.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, HOST:
U.S. students have been missing an alarming amount of school in the wake of the pandemic. When they miss lots of days without an excuse – well, that’s known as truancy. Every state has a policy, and many of those policies make truancy illegal. In some places, law enforcement officers will visit families’ homes even during summertime. Reporter Dylan Peers McCoy of member station WFYI spent a day with one of those officers. She brings us this report from Madison County in central Indiana.
DYLAN PEERS MCCOY, BYLINE: Mitch Carroll is wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and pristine white sneakers when we head out on a Thursday in May.
MITCH CARROLL: I go in a little light.
MCCOY: But it’s obvious that he’s in law enforcement. He’s got a badge and a Glock 9-millimeter pistol at his waist.
CARROLL: Some people that are career law enforcement officers would say, you should have your tac vest on at a minimum. You should have your radio.
MCCOY: Carroll is a retired cop who investigates truancy for a local prosecutor’s office. That tac vest and radio are meant to keep him safe, but he leaves them behind because it’s too intimidating to the families he’s visiting.
CARROLL: I’m here on a friendship mission.
MCCOY: We pull up to a white apartment building with teal trim. The sun’s out, and someone’s mowing the lawn nearby.
CARROLL: Hi, you Sharon (ph)?
MCCOY: Sharon looks nervous as she steps out onto her porch. Her grandson is 14 and in middle school.
CARROLL: Sharon, I’m Mitch Carroll. I’m with the Madison County prosecutor’s office. Deep breath – you’re not in trouble (laughter).
SHARON: Good.
MCCOY: The number of K-12 students missing too much school is 75% higher than before the pandemic. That’s according to data compiled by the American Enterprise Institute. Those absences can get in the way of learning and lower students’ chances of graduating. When students here in Madison County have lots of unexcused absences, families can face legal consequences. Schools referred over 600 students and guardians to the prosecutor’s office last year for violating the state’s truancy laws. Carroll is at Sharon’s home because her grandson has about 30 absences.
SHARON: Go out here and sit down. We got the dog in here.
MCCOY: Sharon calls for her grandson. We’re only identifying Sharon by her first name because this story involves sensitive information about him. We aren’t naming him for the same reason.
CARROLL: What are your interests in school? What do you like best, subjectwise?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Math, science.
CARROLL: Good for you. Science guy.
MCCOY: Sharon tells Carroll that her grandson missed a lot of school because he gets anxious. She pulled him out of the local district. And she says she already spoke to someone there.
SHARON: I told her I was going to do homeschooling.
CARROLL: OK. Yeah.
SHARON: She said, OK, because he’s struggling in school.
CARROLL: OK.
MCCOY: Then they talk about Sharon’s homeschool plan.
SHARON: What he’s doing now is, like, a homework book. He has to do 15 minutes a day on that.
CARROLL: My job here, Sharon, is to make sure that – you know, I just didn’t want him not going anywhere.
SHARON: Right.
CARROLL: Because, you know, at some juncture, you could be hearing from juvenile probation, you know…
MCCOY: By the end of the visit, the tension feels like it’s dissipated a little. I pull Sharon aside.
How’s it feel to have Mitch come here and to have someone from the prosecutor’s office shop knocking at your door?
SHARON: Shoot. I’m going to police station, they’re booking me and he’s going to juvenile (laughter). But it’s hard taking care of your grandkid.
MCCOY: Sharon’s been raising her grandson for the past two years. She says, it’s not that he doesn’t want to go to school.
SHARON: He’ll get dressed and get ready to go, but then when he gets ready to go, he would just get himself all worked up. And I try to tell him what’s wrong, you know? I don’t know, Mimi. I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m just having anxiety issue.
MCCOY: Sharon says she has doctor’s notes for many of his absences, and she asked his doctor for help. But he still struggles. It feels like homeschooling might be less stressful. When Carroll and I get back in the car, I asked what he thought of that visit.
CARROLL: I’d say that’s a win. A 14-year-old that had missed, you know, over a month, and now sounds like he’s exploring a homeschool option.
MCCOY: Sometimes families say they’re going to homeschool without thinking it through. But Carroll is optimistic about this family. As we drive, we chat about his work.
When you make a visit, are there times when you feel like, this was a total bust, it was a failure?
CARROLL: Oh, yeah.
MCCOY: What kind of stuff has to be going on?
CARROLL: Well, usually, if it’s that, it’s because the parents are apathetic or just not engaged. But I’ve had plenty where the parents are just not interested in being parents.
MCCOY: We visit close to a dozen homes in one day.
CARROLL: So now we’re going just off the downtown here.
MCCOY: Most of them open the door.
(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING)
CARROLL: It’s Mitch Carroll with the prosecutor’s office.
MCCOY: A high schooler who recently had a baby only did about 20 minutes of virtual school a day.
(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING)
MCCOY: A middle schooler who was bullied skips school to go to a friend’s house.
CARROLL: I’m Mitch Carroll I’m with the prosecutor’s office.
MCCOY: A 16-year-old work shifts at Walmart instead of logging on to online classes.
It’s close to 4 P.M., and we’ve been knocking on doors for half the day when Carroll pulls up to a nondescript house on a quiet suburban street. The family has multiple elementary schoolers who each have more than 20 unexcused absences.
(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING)
MCCOY: A woman opens the door. We’re only identifying her by her middle initial, J., so she can talk freely about how she decides when to keep her kids home from school.
CARROLL: Are you familiar – I don’t want to be condescending to you. You seem a smart gal. But do you understand the difference between an excused absence and an unexcused absence?
J: Yeah. It’s literally because I…
MCCOY: J tells Carroll her kids miss a lot of school because they’re sick. As they talk, a few kids come into the room.
CARROLL: Hi, guys. What you got all that makeup on for? Look at you. How old are you?
MCCOY: J says two of her kids have asthma and the family has gotten the flu twice.
J: If these three children got the flu, I’m not going to send the other ones because I feel like it’s going to make everybody else sick.
MCCOY: If J can get doctor’s notes, the days when her children were sick won’t be counted as truancy under Indiana law. But no matter why students are absent, missing school can be bad for kids in the long run. Younger students are less likely to read at grade level, and that makes them more likely to drop out of high school later on.
CARROLL: And I say, all right, then, we’ll get out of your hair then. So hey, good to see everybody.
MCCOY: When we’re back in the car, I ask Carroll what he makes of that visit.
CARROLL: I mean, the home looks clean. The kids are clean. They were well-behaved. They seem like, you know – so, you know, again, it’s not a perfect scenario. We…
MCCOY: Carroll says he’ll touch base with the kids’ school because they’ve missed a lot of days. We make another stop, then head back to the prosecutor’s office.
CARROLL: And with that, Dylan, we are done.
MCCOY: Carroll will keep making these visits. He hopes it makes a difference, and that it might be enough to push students to go back to school.
For NPR News, I’m Dylan Peers McCoy in Madison County, Ind.