Truancy is TECHNICALLY a crime but who the hell actually reports it?

Quote:If there's one thing the public school system shouldn't be doing right now, it's making life even more hellishly difficult for parents. And yet many teachers in the state of Massachusetts are contacting the authorities to report parents for suspected child abuse when kids fail to show up for Zoom classes.

"Massachusetts school officials have reported dozens of families to state social workers for possible neglect charges because of issues related to their children's participation in remote learning classes during the pandemic shutdown in the spring," The Boston Globe reported on Saturday.

The infuriating article is worth reading in full. The Globe spoke with several parents who have received calls and visits from the state Department of Children and Families (DCF). The department has the power to remove children from their homes and place them in foster care if agents suspect that kids are being mistreated, abused, or neglected—and DCF considers distance-learning no-shows to be possible abuse cases. DCF lists numerous circumstances in which teachers should feel obliged to call the cops, among them kids appearing tired or hungry during Zoom sessions.

Working parents who have no choice but to leave their young children in the care of a sibling, or let them fend for themselves, will be particularly vulnerable to unfounded child services investigations. This isn't a theoretical concern. Consider the case of Em Quiles, who

struggled to work her full-time job while overseeing her young son's schooling. During remote class time, her 7-year-old was largely supervised by his teenage brother, who had his own school work to do.

Quiles said she told staff at Heard Street Discovery Academy in Worcester in the spring that her work schedule made it tough to assist with virtual schooling and she struggled to navigate the school's online platforms. "They didn't offer any help," she said.

Then in June, Quiles was stunned to receive a call from the state's Department of Children and Families. The school had accused Quiles of neglect, she was told, because the 7-year-old missed class and homework assignments.

Another mother, a Spanish-speaking immigrant, requested a virtual meting with a school councillor to discuss her son's behavioral difficulties, which had worsened during pandemic-induced isolation. A few days after she spoke with the counselor, DCF called the mom. Someone at the school—possibly the counselor—had accused the mom of "general neglect" based on "behaviors observed or disclosed during remote learning." The agency spent weeks investigating the matter, interrogating the mother and her son on everything from "the contents of her refrigerator to her son's sleeping location." The allegation was eventually dismissed.

A third parent—Christi Brouder, a single mother of four kids—faced frequent threats from teachers that DCF would intervene if the children didn't improve their virtual attendance. Once, when her 10-year-old daughter was tuned in to Zoom class, Brouder's autistic six-year-old son leapt naked in front of the screen. Predictably, the school called the cops:

Later that day, Brouder received a call from the Department of Children and Families. The social worker informed her that school staff had reported a naked adult male exposing himself on the computer.

Brouder explained that she lives alone with her four young children and that the nude male was only 6.

She was relieved when the social worker told her the case wouldn't go anywhere. The school district, however, wasn't ready to drop the issue. The head of Haverhill's special-education department told Brouder that afternoon they had contacted the city police department "due to the severity of the allegations," according to Brouder.

A plainclothes police officer came to her home that evening; that case, too, was eventually dropped.

Massachusetts's DCF is not radically different from the child services departments in the other 49 states, and similar issues are probably cropping up elsewhere. The harm is likely to be worse for poorer families, though economic security is by no means a guarantee of safety from predatory child services investigations.

The decision to rely partly or entirely on virtual learning has created a horrible situation for many working parents who depend on school for day care. Public school officials should be treating such families with empathy and patience, not putting the authorities on speed dial.

Link

Teachers have bitched and moaned for eternity about the stresses of teaching and having weekends and holidays and breaks off, now is a whole new plethora of crying. Unions are striking so they can stay home and watch kids on webcams more.

Going to get real ugly. Most of these kids are going to be home alone. Many will be elementary age. Many will not participate. Single moms and dual income families are about to get hammered. Stories of kids being taken away from good parents are going to be numerous and viral.

So which would you prefer:

Call DCF because the child is not attending classes on line OR

Call DCF because the child is attending on line classes but is not being fed because mom can't work and pay for food becasue she is making sure the child is at virtual school

CPS is a plague upon society.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/arc...ns/374809/

Quote:In (2015), Child-Protective Services Checked Up on 3.2 Million Children. 2.5 million of those kids were declared 'non-victims.'

.....

On an average day, police officers and child-welfare caseworkers throughout the United States remove more than seven hundred children from the custody of their parents to protect them from alleged abuse or neglect. These children are typically seized without warning from their homes or schools, subjected to intrusive interrogations, medical examinations and/or strip searches, and forced to live in foster homes or group residences while the legal system sorts out their future. Removals can be terrifying experiences for children and families. Often they occur at night. Parents have little or no time to prepare children for separation. The officials conducting the removal, as well as the adults supervising the placement, are usually complete strangers to the child. Children are thrust into alien environs, separated from parents, siblings and all else familiar, with little if any idea of why they have been taken there... While taking kids from parents in this fashion is only permitted in emergencies as a matter of law, the way things play out in practice is very different. According to statistics published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, more than 100,000 children who were removed in 2001–more than one in three–were later found not to have been maltreated at all,"

Doing the math on 2.5 million and 100,000 per year, this means that during their childhood, 61% of kids will have their parents falsely investigated by CPS, and 2.5% (1-in-40) will be unjustly seized by CPS and put in foster care.


This is a bit of an older article, but little has changed in the past decade on this.

It sounds like CPS wrote the rules the teachers are required to follow.

This is a tough one... valid points are being made above, but obviously truancy is an issue. The question of 'who reports it', well, the schools do... and of course police do if they see/pick up kids during school hours. If you don't attend enough classes, you don't graduate.


Lots of those falsely reported claims are between divorced parents or feuding adults. Really a sickening situation.

1. Isn't this a situation where the 'defund police' folks would says cops aren't needed?
2. Virtual truancy is more about proving the teachers were online and thus working than the kids learning IMO.

(08-19-2020 02:14 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  This is a tough one... valid points are being made above, but obviously truancy is an issue. The question of 'who reports it', well, the schools do... and of course police do if they see/pick up kids during school hours. If you don't attend enough classes, you don't graduate.


Lots of those falsely reported claims are between divorced parents or feuding adults. Really a sickening situation.

This is a tough one. These kids need adult supervision and many won't have that. Also, no matter how good the parents are, school isn't the #1 priority for most kids, even the high achievers. If no parents are there telling them what to do, they will not be participating. I doubt my son, who is a straight A student and rising 6th grader wouldn't. My middle child is going into Pre-K and her school is opening. If she was a year older and going into kindergarten, I wouldn't even register her for school. I think it would be appropriate for the all virtual districts to allow parents the option to take a gap year if the virtual stuff isn't going to work for them. My children will be fine because my wife has the ability to stay home and we have the infrastructure at home to get by, but this is going to be a disaster.

Teachers are liberals. Liberals want to Defund the Police. Who do liberals call when they don’t get their way? The Police

(08-20-2020 06:13 AM)vandiver49 Wrote:  1. Isn't this a situation where the 'defund police' folks would says cops aren't needed?
2. Virtual truancy is more about proving the teachers were online and thus working than the kids learning IMO.

Yes... although lots of them espouse something much more (which you allude to) many of them (not the protestors) would espouse more of a social worker than a cop. At least it would get them all out from behind the counter at Starbucks (the social workers)

I suppose if you show up and multi-task (like lots of us are doing right now) and can pass the tests, you're fine.

Teaching should be right down the middle - actually it should not be on any path left, right or center.

Most classes (I say most) are factual in nature. English, math, even science.... History is history.... it should not be presented in any slant either. It happened - here is what happened, here is when it happened, where applicable here are the lessons learned and the cause and effect of what happened.

Once you get to college - there should be left AND right perspectives on any non factual subjects (philosophy for example).



Teaching should bring you every side of the story so you can assess and come to your own conclusions after you have heard all of the information....

Preaching is what these college instructors engage in. They tell you what to think instead of the process of how to think. These people are not nearly as enlightened and educated as they portray themselves. They are pushing THEIR perspective on you and will grade you harshly if you do not regurgitate their OPINIONS.

The systematic destruction of the family wins again.