Despite attendance officers, rules, up to 150 children not yet in school.

Classes in the Vicksburg Warren School District have been in session for nearly two full weeks, but as many as 150 students who should be in school have yet to show up on one of the 14 campuses.

&#8220We won’t have a full student population until after Labor Day,” said Dr. James Price, superintendent of the 9,100-student district.

&#8220We have some secondary students who don’t show up, but it’s mainly in the kindergartens. Some parents just don’t feel like it’s important for their children to be enrolled at the beginning of school,” he said.

Whether the reason is an extended summer vacation, a holdover from years past when school didn’t start until September or parents’ anxiety to part with their children for the first time, Price said it happens every year.

&#8220The majority of students we’ll register in the upcoming weeks will be in kindergarten and first grade,” Price said. &#8220 We advertise kindergarten registration and we preregister at the Head Start centers, but despite all these efforts, young mothers simply won’t part with these kids until the last minute.”

The Mississippi Compulsory School Attendance Law requires all school-age children 6 to 17 to be enrolled in and regularly attend school. It also requires a parent to inform the school of the reason for a child’s absence and the school to report excessive unexcused absences to a School Attendance Officer.

&#8220The compulsory law was designed to force parents who allowed their kids to drop out in fifth or sixth grade to keep them in school,” Price said. &#8220But since its implementation, parents have easily found ways to circumvent this law legally.”

Any parent found not complying with the law can be subject to a fine of up to $1,000 or up to one year in jail or both.

Just last week, a Vicksburg woman was arrested and charged with failure to comply with the law, a misdemeanor.

Diane Marks, 36, 3801 Washington St., was arrested Tuesday after she attempted to enroll her 10-year-old son.

County prosecutor Richard Johnson said the child apparently had never attended public or legitimate non-public school.

Further investigation has found a second child, a 16-year-old daughter, who has also never been enrolled in school, Johnson said, though no further charges had been filed.

Marks could not be contacted and did not return calls to her home, but a man who identified himself as her husband and the father of the children said they chose not to enroll the children earlier because the schools were not safe.

&#8220There are drugs and guns,” he said. &#8220I heard of a case where a 6-year-old brought a gun to school.”

Price said no such incident occurred.

The man said the children had a tutor for seven years, but he declined to identify the tutor but said she was approved by school district officials. He wouldn’t identify the officials.

Price said he was unaware of any approval.

Both children showed propensity to learn and had been handed over to the Department of Human Services, Johnson said.

The woman was released on $1,000 bond and is to report Sept. 11 to Judge Johnny Price of Warren County Court and Youth Court.

The law also requires a child to be enrolled in school within 15 calendar days of the first day of the school year. Since school started Aug. 8, parents have until Wednesday to comply or face disciplinary action.

Judge Price said besides a case of parents’ hypochondria or mental illness, the main problem is that the children who repeatedly miss school tend to come from families who place no value on education.

&#8220The parent or parents have little or no education, so they have no concept of education’s ultimate rewards,” he said. &#8220It’s not like they decide not to educate their children. It’s not intentional. They just don’t value it.”

Price said the compulsory attendance law makes it critical for a child in kindergarten through fourth grade to attend school every day.

&#8220They need to start from the beginning. When we get them at 15 or 16, it’s hard to start the education process over again,” he said.

&#8220When they’re young and don’t come to school, it’s a parental problem. When they’re older, it’s on them. Every child can get on a school bus, and the school system will take it from there,” he said.

He said cases such as Marks’ are rare.

&#8220Every once in a while we’ll get an older child who has never been in school before. If they’ve never been registered, there’s no way for us to know about them. There’s not a tracking system for this,” he said.

The school district has no direct authority over school attendance, which is monitored through the deputy superintendent’s office, and cases are handed over to Youth Court.

Each county has at least one school attendance officer, employed by the Mississippi Department of Education. Warren County has three who will all be housed in the school district’s instructional services offices by the end of the month.

Joyce Edmond, one of the three officers who for now have offices in the Warren County Courthouse, said a basic process is followed in enforcement of the attendance law.

&#8220At five unexcused absences, the parents are sent a letter and the attendance of that student is monitored. At 10, the parent and student are asked to attend an informal hearing at Youth Court, during which school and community officials discuss the importance of education. And at 12, we sign a petition at Youth Court and a court date is scheduled,” she said.

Children younger than 6 were not included under the law until 2003.

Edmond oversees attendance at Beechwood, Bowmar, South Park, Warren Central Junior High and home school. She said kindergartners do not fall under the compulsory law until they are enrolled.

&#8220Kindergarten is not mandatory in Mississippi, but as soon as they start school, the same guidelines apply,” she said.

Edmond said often times, parents withdraw kindergarten children after a few weeks.

&#8220Sometimes they won’t stop crying, and the parents don’t think they’re ready. That’s fine, but they have to formally withdraw instead of just not showing up anymore,” she said.

Home-schoolers, too, must register with school attendance officers. The deadline for home school registration is Sept. 15, Edmond said.

The other two officers are Tracie Young, who oversees Redwood, Sherman Avenue, Vicksburg High, Warren Central Intermediate and Warrenton; and Annette Jones-Baskin, who oversees Warren Central High, Dana Road, Vicksburg Intermediate and Vicksburg Junior High. All three work together to oversee Grove Street School and the private and parochial schools.

Superintendent Price said for the second year now, social workers and behavioral specialists employed by the district will be making home visits to children who are habitually absent in an additional effort to cut absenteeism.

The reason children should be enrolled in school is multifold, Price said.

&#8220The main reason, clearly, is academic. If you don’t bring him to school, we can’t teach him. And even sporadic attendance affects the child as well as every student in the class,” he said.

A second reason is test scores and how the district rates statewide and federally.

The number of students who take the Mississippi Curriculum Tests at the end of the school year has a direct affect on whether or not the school has met Adequate Yearly Progress, Price said.

&#8220In the majority of cases, we fail to meet AYP because we don’t test 95 percent of eligible students,” he said.

A third reason, he said, is that absenteeism can cost the community money.

School district officials including Price and Board of Trustees President Jan Daigre are increasingly pushing attendance by all students, especially since the state funding formula has changed.

Nearly all of the district’s state funding is based on a formula with average daily attendance as a multiplier. The higher the attendance, the more state dollars.

In the past, the figures could be an average of attendance in months two and three, which the state considers October and November, or an average of all nine months of the school year. The local district usually reports the nine-month average because the number is higher, Price said.

But now the whole-year option has been removed.

&#8220They’re only going to count October and November. We need an all-out campaign to get every child to school during those months,” Daigre said.

&#8220The optimistic hope is that once they’re there for those months, they’ll be there for the rest of the year,” she said.

Last year alone, a total of 79,000 attendance days were missed by students in the district, equaling a total of 453 school years, Daigre said.

Price said the district missed out on $3 million because of average daily attendance.

&#8220That was money that was ours to have without coming from the taxpayers,” he said. &#8220That’s ridiculous.”

In the end, the old proverb of it taking a village to rear a child rings true, Price said.

&#8220In order for us to teach these children, it’s going to take all of us,” he said. &#8220The schools need to be diligent in tracking students’ attendance; the parents need to be responsible for having the students present; and the community needs to hold us all accountable for making sure it gets done.”

ENROLLMENT BY THE NUMBERS