Last Stop! Trauncy Court!

While this a good article explaining the problem with truancy it also, for me, raised some thoughts.

Maryland law requires parents to get them to school until the age of 16 or face legal consequences, including fines and possible jail time.

...the maximum penalty — 10 days in county detention.

I must disagree with the legal penalty when regards to truancy. There are could be many root causes of truancy including chronic truancy. If I was a judge, would only convict them and sent them to jail if they knew their children is chronically truant and did absolutely nothing , and that's would be used as a last resort.

This also caught my mind:

‘‘Tons of services have been offered to these families before coming to court, but apparently, they haven’t been successful,” he added.

The report failed to mention what services the county offers in regards to truancy. If those programs were to exist they may not even know by TV, since you will not see one public service announcement during prime time. Not one!