The Texas Legislature’s decision to implement a new truancy policy has the rumor mill running amuck in all Texas public schools. After the United States Department of Justice announced it would be investigating the truancy policy of Dallas County, one of two counties in the state operating separate truancy courts, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 2398 to reform their approach for punishing chronic school-skippers. The bill, with an intent to expose less juveniles to the criminal justice system in an effort to prevent any continuation of criminal activity, went into effect on Sept. 1, 2015.

“The bill’s goal is to enhance student academic performance by addressing chronic truancy without unnecessarily exposing juveniles to the adult criminal process,” Texas Representative James White, who authored the bill, said. “This should enable parents, educators and judicial officers to address issues that contribute to truancy from a social service perspective to enhance rehabilitation, not an adult criminal justice perspective.”

Previously, truancy served as a Class C misdemeanor for which school children were prosecuted, punished and fined for cutting classes and missing school. However, many argue that issuing such a harsh charge will cause students to proceed down a bad path towards worse crimes. By avoiding the treatment of truant students as criminal adults, courts ensure that juveniles will not continue a pattern of criminal behavior.

“Research indicates that the best place to initiate and solve campus-based challenges are with campus-based interventions,” White said. “The courts and the criminal justice system is the last resort and an exceptional option reserved for a few instances. This reformed legislation puts our families, educators and local courts in a more advantageous position of effectively, efficiently and thoughtfully addressing school attendance challenges.”

Another goal of the new bill is to encourage schools to take action to reform the truant student’s behavior earlier rather than letting the issue worsen. Intervention must be employed after three unexcused absences (including partial-day absences) and can take various forms, such as the imposition of a behavior improvement plan, school-based community service or referral to counseling, mediation, mentoring, a teen court program or other services aimed at addressing the student’s truancy.

“Most school districts wouldn’t start the truancy prevention measures until nine or ten unexcused absences,” John Payton, Justice of the Peace, Precinct 3-2 said. “Now, schools are required to do the truancy prevention measures when a student has three unexcused absences in a four week period of time.”

Though the policy for handling truancy cases has changed, the violations that warrant a truancy charge have not. However, students and parents alike are predominantly in the dark when it comes to what precipitates a truancy charge.

“If a student commits the act of truancy on ten or more occasions in a six month period of time and has gone through the truancy prevention measures, then they get filed on for truancy,” Payton said.

Even more confusion lies in the difference between make-up hours and truancy.

“Truancy is with unexcused absences, where the kid is either skipping school or failing to provide doctor’s notes on time or at all,” Assistant Principal Kevin Lyons said. “When it comes to credit make-up, the state doesn’t care whether it’s excused or unexcused. If you’re absent, you’re absent. That’s it.”

In all Texas public schools, a 90% attendance rule is enforced, allowing students to miss only 10% of the school year. For the Plano Independent School District (PISD), the fall semester of the 180 day school year is shorter than that of the spring, so students are allotted eight days in the fall to miss school and 10 in the spring.

“Students have to be in attendance at least 90 percent of the time to be able to receive credit,” Payton said. “If a student falls under a 90 percent attendance rate in their classes, they have to perform make up hours to make up those class hours to receive your class credit.”

Perhaps the most common misconception students have is that upon reaching the age of 18, they are no longer required to attend school because they are considered legal adults in the eyes of the law. However, the new truancy law allows students to be punished for truancy until age 19.

“In previous years, once a student with attendance issues turned 18, they couldn’t be filed on for a truancy case,” Lyons said. “That has changed. Of course here at a senior high, that could affect students.”

Unlike what many students thought, which was that truancy had gone away and a truancy law ceased to exist in Texas, that was never the case. Regardless of whether or not a charge will be doled out for truancy, skipping school is never in the best interest of the student.

“We want students to come to school to get a free education,” Assistant Principal Michael Cruz said. “Here, they can take advantage of the opportunities to have a career that helps them reach whatever goal and aspirations they may have for their future.”