Kids cutting class? Mom and Dad could go to jail

Schools in rural Alaska are taking a stern approach to truancy: Get your child to class or you could go to jail. And they are not alone. Already this year school districts in Texas, Pennsylvania and Alabama have resorted to arresting parents.

It sounds like tough love, and it is. Educators badly want their students to succeed. But children have no hope of learning if they aren't showing up to school.

In the Inupiat Eskimo village of Kivalina, getting kids to class is a top priority this year for the Northwest Arctic Borough School District. For at least the fifth year in a row, Kivalina's McQueen School has failed to get its students to meet federal reading and writing standards. If the trend continues, outsiders could be brought in to run the school, something no one in the region wants to see.

Last year, of the 66 students who took standardized tests, only eight were proficient in math and nine in reading and writing -- nearly the same as in 2008. The results place the school's third through 10th graders among the lowest performing students within the district's 11-village reach. Heading into the 2010-2011 school year, the district is in an all-out push to help Kivalina turn things around, and getting kids to class is among the top priorities. On average, students there last year missed more than two months of classes. This year, if it happens again, parents have been warned it won't be children alone who find themselves dealing with the fallout.

"Generally, the parents blame the kids," said Michelle Woods, an attendance counselor for the district who believes the problem, at its core, actually boils down to poor parenting.

At the request of the McQueen School principal, Woods traveled to the village earlier this month to speak with parents about the attendance policy and how it will be enforced.

Overlook an attendance problem and the school will take corrective action, Woods said at the meeting. She warned parents that in the most extreme cases they could face criminal charges. Get involved with the school and its teachers before that happens, she advised. Teachers can help a family work through the problems that may be blocking a student from getting to class, but they are helpless if parents aren't making the effort.

All of this comes as the school is working to shake a painful history of teachers finding themselves at odds with the community. McQueen closed once in 1979 and again in 2002 after students threatened teachers with violence. Teacher turnover, cultural conflicts and brewing resentments eventually created a volatile mix that brought things to a head.

In the years since, the district has made strides. Teacher turnover has vastly improved, down from 35 to 40 percent per year to 20 percent. And while for nearly the last four years the district has been under mandated state intervention as a result of low test scores, last month it received good news: Enough improvements have been made to remove that requirement, making it the first school district in Alaska to be removed from the intervention. Even so, Kivalina -- one of the three lowest performing schools in the area -- remains closely under watch by the state.