Latest news with #ChildRequiringAssistance
Boston Globe
03-08-2025
- Boston Globe
‘It's not an education agency': Advocates slam school use of the court for student truancy
Advertisement From 2022 through 2025, schools asked the courts to intervene in truancy cases 5,400 times. In all, there was a 13 percent increase in districts using the court process from the 2022 to 2024 school years, according to a recent report from The proceedings don't carry fines, come with criminal charges, or threaten parents with arrest, as is done in other states. But they do haul families into often bleak juvenile court scenes, where other minors face criminal offenses and parental rights are terminated. Families might also be assigned a probation officer to help connect children and parents with support services. Child advocates said the court system is not the proper avenue to deal with truancies. It's a mistake to push families into court to solve absenteeism, they said, and they worry bringing students before judges only pushes students, especially those who are high risk, into the criminal system. Advertisement 'It's not an education agency,' Francine Sherman, a clinical professor emerita at Boston College Law School, where she founded and led its Juvenile Rights Advocacy Program, said of the court system. 'The court simply doesn't have the tools to address this particular problem.' School leaders agree courts are not their first choice to resolve truancy issues, and said they first try to help connect children and families with services such as education help and clinical mental health care. But in extreme cases, schools may need the assistance of the courts to resolve truancy cases, said Mary Bourque, a former Chelsea superintendent who serves as the executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents. 'This is about the parent and guardians, and making sure that the parent or guardian is getting [their child] to school,' she said. 'Sometimes you do need leverage with the parent or guardian.' The court petitions, referred to as Child Requiring Assistance filings, are intended to to help connect families with services such as educational assistance and mental health programs. They can be filed by schools, police, or families. Students are considered truant when they 'willfully fail' to attend school for more than eight days in a quarter. Under state law, Conley said her B-average student had never been in trouble, yet she watched as her daughter suddenly stood before a judge, had to be represented by a lawyer, and was assigned a probation officer. Advertisement 'For her to have to go from never getting in trouble in school to that, it was traumatizing,' Conley said. Experts and education advocates agree absenteeism harms students' abilities to learn. In Massachusetts, chronic absenteeism rates remain 50 percent higher than before the pandemic. To appear before a judge for truancy, students often miss school to be brought to court. Many of the cases involve children with special needs. The petitions also disproportionately involve Black and Latino students, the child advocate's office said in its report. The danger, advocates argue, is that these court filings — which do not allege criminal behavior — can create issues for children such as post-traumatic stress disorder and negative emotional well-being, 'Not only is it traumatizing, it has clearly very adverse consequences for children,' said Jay Blitzman, a retired juvenile court judge who spent more than two decades on the bench before retiring in 2020. 'Going to courts to address these issues is not the preferred thing to do.' From Blitzman's experience, 'many of the truancy cases' that came before him appeared to involve children who did not receive appropriate school services for their disabilities and special needs. The state's Office of the Child Advocate, established by the Legislature to ensure children receive appropriate services, reviewed truancy court data Advertisement Among those calling for reform is state Senator Robyn Kennedy, a Worcester Democrat, who filed legislation this year to change the current law. The proposal includes measures such as barring children under age 12 from being involved with Child Requiring Assistance petitions, plus expanding the role of the state's existing network of family resource centers, including a requirement schools refer families to one of those centers before filing a petition with a court. Bourque, with the state school superintendent association, said a better solution to districts filing court actions is for the state to expand the number of its School administrators in some of the state's largest districts, including Boston, Worcester, Brockton, Lawrence, and Chelsea, said they typically pursue truancy cases only when other measures fail to connect children and families with support services. Such services include conducting special education evaluationsand mental health assessments, and sending letters to parents and guardians. 'In VERY rare occasions do we consider judicial intervention,' Chelsea Superintendent Almi Guajardo Abeyta said in an email. 'We do everything possible to avoid it.' The 6,100-student district filed 123 Child Requiring Assistance petitions in truancy cases from 2022-2025, but was able to reduce its rate by 44 percent to 25 in the 2024-25 school year, progress Conley said more districts should be making. In Chelsea, administrators attribute the decline in court filings to a focus on family engagement as a priority for the district, Abeyta said. Advertisement The district has more than doubled its number of family liaisons, social workers, and counselors. And it has launched a Navigator program for students with chronic absenteeism or other needs, which pairs them with a teacher, social worker, or other district staff member, she said. 'We believe that parents are our partners and do our best to work with families,' she said. Conley, whose daughter appeared in court, said the Acton-Boxborough district's decision to push the truancy case to court was a breach of trust. The March 2024 court hearing ended with an 'informal assistance agreement' signed by her daughter, her probation officer, and the judge, according to a copy reviewed by the Globe. The girl agreed to terms that required her to attend school, participate in tutoring, and cooperate with therapeutic services. About two months after the hearing, the girl's school notified the girl's probation officer and attorney it had received enough information 'to drop the CRA,' according to a brief email viewed by the Globe sent by a school vice principal. It was unclear what led to the decision. Peter Light, the district's superintendent, declined to answer Globe questions, citing student privacy laws. Conley said her family has since moved from Massachusetts. Schools need to do more to provide services for children with disabilities, she said. 'If these kids were given the tools needed to properly learn, most of these cases could go away completely,' Conley said. John Hilliard can be reached at
Boston Globe
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Mass. kids struggling in school need support. Too often, they're being sent to court.
In fiscal year 2024, the state recorded 4,290 Child Requiring Assistance filings, a 6 percent increase from 2022. Petitions from parents, usually filed due to a child running away or being difficult to manage, accounted for close to 60 percent of those petitions in 2024, the report found. Advertisement In some cases, children as young as 6 years old were brought to court to address behavioral or discipline problems, including truancy , the Office of the Child Advocate reported. Petitions associated with children ages 6 to 12 increased by 17 percent from 2022 to 2024. Among the state's counties, Suffolk reported the highest rate of children subjected to the petitions, a possible sign of insufficient resources in the Boston school district, Threadgill said. Advertisement The district did not respond to a request for comment. Families at times are advised to turn to Child Requiring Assistance filings by educators, therapists, or medical providers who don't realize that they are often unnecessary and aren't aware of the power the petitions can give the court. In some cases, a petition can result in the child's removal from the home. Latino children were 3.5 times more likely than white students to have a CRA petition filed against them. Black children were referred to the court system at similar rates to Latino children, the report found. Glenn Koocher, head of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, expressed concern that Child Requiring Assistance filings, also called CRAs, were more likely to be filed for students in poverty and noted that aggressive immigration enforcement this year was likely to exacerbate existing racial disparities by encouraging children to miss school. 'If you were afraid that your parents are going to get deported, or that your uncles or aunts or cousins are going to get deported...' he said. 'I would think that would make them anxious about going to school.' A 2022 report from the Juvenile Justice Policy and Data Board, a statewide policy evaluation organization that includes representatives from organizations involved in the juvenile justice system, recommended addressing the needs of children subject to CRAs without the court's involvement. Since then, though, the opposite has happened, with petitions initiated by schools growing the most. Petitions due to chronic truancy and habitual misbehavior account for roughly 43 percent of all those filed in 2024, the report stated, an increase of almost 14 percent over two years. Advertisement Families statewide often struggle to obtain from schools the Related : 'The special education system is very complex, the procedures, the process, the regulations that need to be followed,' said Ellen Chambers, founder of SPEDWatch, a Massachusetts activist group for children. 'It is very easy for a school district to pull the wool over a family's eyes.' Related : While the latest report didn't include data on the connection between CRAs and special education needs, the The Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents did not respond to a request for comment. School absences or discipline problems, the kinds of behaviors that are often causes for school-filed CRAs, are also signs a child isn't getting needed educational supports, said Chambers, who also works with families as an adviser appointed by the court through the CRA process. The vast majority of children she connects with through CRAs are disengaged at school due to unidentified disabilities or a lack of special education supports. Advertisement 'They become very, very anxious because they can't keep up with what's going on,' she said. Karrie Conley is the parent of a teenage girl, who she asked not be named, who was the subject of a CRA petition last year in the Acton-Boxborough School District as she dealt with extreme anxiety. 'She was locking herself in the bathroom for four hours at a time,' Conley said. The school's attempts to accommodate the teenager's difficulties understanding math as well as her physical and mental health challenges were inadequate, the mother said. The district withdrew the petition shortly after it was filed, but Conley said the experience only deepened her daughter's antipathy for attending school. Now, she's attending a private school that allows her to learn at home, but she still struggles to manage a full course load, she said. 'I will be lucky if I can get this child to community college when she graduates,' she said. Peter Light, superintendent of the Acton-Boxborough School District, said he couldn't speak about a specific case involving a student but said the district turns to CRA petitions rarely, once or twice a school year. 'We typically work with parents very closely in these cases,' he said. In its report, the Office of the Child Advocate pointed to Advertisement 'A court process is just not going to be the best way to deal with complicated behavioral health situations, educational situations, or family dynamics,' Threadgill said. Jason Laughlin can be reached at
