Gilroy
– Truants beware. At least three days a month, the Gilroy Police
Department is looking for you.
School Resource Officer Mike Terasaki swept the city for truants
Tuesday, scanning Gilroy streets, parks, even businesses, for
students who should have been in school.
By Lori Stuenkel
Gilroy – Truants beware. At least three days a month, the Gilroy Police Department is looking for you.
School Resource Officer Mike Terasaki swept the city for truants Tuesday, scanning Gilroy streets, parks, even businesses, for students who should have been in school.
Terasaki set out from the police station about the time classes were starting for his targeted sixth- to 12th-grade students.
“After doing this for so long, I pretty much know where to go,” said Terasaki, a 27-year officer in his sixth year covering schools.
He checked out residential streets near Gilroy High first, eyes darting through the windows of the department’s SUV. He drove through a complex of townhouses where, he says, high school students often hang out when avoiding classes, or after school hours.
Nothing – yet.
The sweep program, in its eighth year, is meant to serve as both a wake-up call and an intervention for truant students. The sweep dates are keep secret, even from schools, to catch students by surprise.
“They think that truancy isn’t an issue or a problem, but it is,” Terasaki said. “We’ve been addressing it, but we’re being a bit more proactive in catching the kids on the streets and letting them know truancy is not acceptable.”
A few minutes later, Terasaki spied what looked like a high school student, walking on Seventh Street, near Eigleberry Street, wearing a backpack and carrying a textbook.
Terasaki pulled his patrol vehicle up next to her, grabbed a clipboard, and hopped out. He asked her why she wasn’t in school. The 15-year-old El Portal Leadership Academy student told him the same thing a lot of students do when caught by a truancy sweep: She had overslept.
Officer Terasaki also fills out a referral form that will be passed from the school to a Community Solutions counselor, who will contact the family to examine what is keeping the student from school and prevent future problems.
Before the El Portal freshman gets in the back seat of the squad car, Terasaki pats her down for weapons and puts her backpack behind the seat. Back at the school, the teen is joined by a second student picked up by another GPD officer at the 7-Eleven store on Tenth Street. Minutes later, and nearly a half-hour after the first bell of the day, the crowd of truants grows to 11, as a group of four girls and three boys strolls down Forest Street, and two girls are dropped off by their mother, who drove them from Santa Nella.
“It’s kind of hard to get here,” one of the Santa Nella residents said.
The students who had walked together were all carrying 7-Eleven coffee cups, having stopped at the Leavesley Avenue store.
Schools will hand out appropriate punishments, usually detention for the first offense. After taking the students to the charter high school’s office, Terasaki was off to find more truants.
Tuesday’s round-up of so many El Portal students was unusual, Terasaki said, because Gilroy High – with more than 10 times as many students – generally has more kids on the street.
This year, sweeps have produced fewer kids than last year and years before. There have been days when Terasaki has used and filled the department’s transport van with a handful of students at a time.
“It’s hit-and-miss,” Terasaki said. “You’ll get kids all day sometimes, and you won’t get any sometimes.”
He spotted what turned out to be two adults in an alley, and took a lap through Wal-Mart, before finding his 12th and final truant of the day, a 15-year-old GHS freshman walking toward campus on Tenth Street almost three hours late.
“I don’t hear my alarm in the morning,” said the student, who said he walked nearly an hour from his Ronan Avenue home. His parents thought he was already at school, he said, because he owns a bike, but had loaned it to a friend.
Whether the truancy sweeps have a lasting impact on students depends on the teens themselves, said Greg Camacho-Light, GHS assistant principal.
For some, truancy is the result of numerous problems that start at home, and a recurring problem. For others, it might be their first – and only – time ditching class.
“It really depends on the student and the situation,” Camacho-Light said.
GHS students who are brought in by a sweep or are classified as truants after missing nine periods end up serving work detail or detention.
School districts can and do prosecute students and even their parents for habitual truancy, although such cases are rare.
“I haven’t gone to court yet, so something’s happening,” Terasaki said.
He also hasn’t cited any repeat offenders.
Truant students might be required to attend a School Attendance Review Board hearing in front of a panel of school and law enforcement personnel, where they sign a contract stating they’ll be at school every day. The assistant District Attorney in charge of prosecuting Santa Clara County truants holds mediations for both students and parents, in which she lays down the law and the consequences – fines or jail time – of remaining truant.
Prosecution isn’t unheard of, though.
The San Benito County District Attorney placed a Hollister mom of truant children on probation last week for failing to send her kids to school. If the 41-year-old woman does not get her children to school every day, she could face six months in jail or a $1,000 fine.
Camacho-Light said truancy sweeps do work, but he would like to see a more community-wide solution. Some cities have programs in which businesses will not sell to any school-aged person during normal school hours.
“It gives them nowhere to go, nothing to do, so they may as well be in school,” he said.
