Program In Place To Help Fight Truancy In Metro Schools

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. - For almost a year, the Metro School district has been surrounded by controversy regarding the student attendance policy. The district has taken some drastic measures to weed out the problem.

Some students are marked present in school when they were actually out running the streets and in some cases even committing crimes.

School administrators have overhauled the way they handle the student attendance policy.

Metro police chief Ronal Serpas came down hard on the district for their failure to keep accurate records.

Tiffanie Harris works with the cluster support team at Antioch High School.

"I feel that the meetings that we're having trying to reach out to the students they're actually understanding that we're actually here to help them," said Harris, Family and Youth Services.

The group is responsible for not only monitoring student attendance, but also if a child is flagged at truant, counselors contact parents. They also begin to keep daily taps to ensure the student is in every class.

"I constantly monitor the attendance of every student that's in here," said Harris.

The system is helping to create a positive change across the district. In comparison to last year the truancy numbers have dipped 10 percent.

"This is a holistic approach to dealing with the root cause of a child's truancy problems, academic problems, behavior problems, social problems or whatever it may be," said Ralph Thompson, assistant superintendent of Metro Schools.

Thompson said attendance issues are far from resolved, but the new system certainly has things moving in the right direction.

"We're making very steady progress on it, and we'll continue to do that until we get the problem solved," said Thompson.

The district has also maintained contact with the Metro police department on the issue. The two periodically meet to discuss attendance numbers and other truancy data.