“Not Present or Accounted For": Part 1

The following is a transcript of Part 1 of the radio series “Not Present or Accounted For: The Attendance Crisis in Baltimore Schools,” which was supported by a grant from the Open Society Institute-Baltimore.

Each year, at epidemic levels, thousands of students in Baltimore public schools don’t show up for class. They rack up absences of 20 or more days and most fall woefully behind in basic learning skills like reading and math. An alarming number eventually drop out altogether. Reasons for school absences range from illness to homelessness, weak family support, and suspensions. Whatever the cause, the scourge has forced city and school leaders to examine how to reconnect at-risk students to the classroom. WEAA begins a 12-part documentary called “Not Present or Accounted For: The Attendance Crisis in Baltimore Schools.” Reporter Melody Simmons has the story.

In the former sanctuary of a church in south Baltimore, a local rapper tells a group of city teens to stay in school. Push hard for your goals, he chants. Keep on course.

It is graduation day at the Chesapeake Learning Center, an alternative school in Brooklyn. Seventeen-year-old student Anthony Tayler is moving on. A father of two, he will attend 10 th grade at Southside Academy in Cherry Hill, where he wants to play football and make straight A’s. But it wasn’t always like that. Tayler explained.

“The most amount of days of school I missed was like 103 in one year. What were you doing for 103 days? Staying at my friend’s house, partying, not doing what I was supposed to do.”

The truancy shredded his grades. Tayler was held back in the fourth grade and twice for the sixth grade. Raised by a single mother, there were struggles at home. Tayler said he stopped caring about school, and took to the streets.

“I never had nobody to tell me right from wrong for real.”

Tayler’s story holds a reoccurring theme when you look at what’s behind the crisis of school attendance in Baltimore. State Department of Education statistics show the city has the lowest daily attendance rate in Maryland. During the 2006-07 school year, a dozen city middle and high schools had truancy rates above 30 percent. That means one-third of their students were habitually truant.

City schools CEO Andres Alonso said there are early indicators. They include absences of 30 days in kindergarten, which often escalates to 50 days by fourth grade.

“It starts early, it’s often sanctioned by the family, that if we really want to get ahead of it, we need to push the families and establish a culture in the schools where we are expecting the kids to be there.”

Patty Schminke, a truancy court coordinator at the University of Baltimore, said the problem has become acute because so many of Baltimore’s youth lack positive reinforcement in their lives. Poor performance and grades in school are on the front line of life – and often the first self-inflicted social casualty.

“These kids are like works in progress…and if they are not able to get it from their parents, because there’s only one there, the mom’s overwhelmed…the kids are looking for it somewhere else. That’s why you see the big gang influx. The kids know that it’s wrong. They don’t really want to go down that road, but they need the protection. They need the friends. They need the support.”

Back in Brooklyn, at the Chesapeake Learning Center, director Ivan Lechinsky said wayward kids are sent here for roughly six months. Many come with a referral from the state Department of Juvenile Services. Redirecting them back into public schools or toward a GED requires skill and patience.

“You start by encouraging him or her to come in every single day of, say, 20-30 days and give it their best shot before they make a decision whether they want to stay here or not. For many kids, that seems to do the trick.”

Starting small is what experts say is needed to reroute tattered lives. Anthony Tayler, who this fall will juggle a 10 th grade workload with raising two children and a job at McDonalds, has a long road ahead. But he’s determined.

“I know that I have to do things other than sit around and wait for things to come. I got to go and achieve my goals. Not wait for them to come to me.”

I’m Melody Simmons, reporting from Brooklyn.