
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 22, 1995                   TAG: 9506220029
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JOYCE E. WILLIAMS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

COUNTY TRIES TO REDUCE TRUANCY

WE IN the Roanoke County school system are always seeking advice on how we can better meet the needs of young people who attend our schools. It was with interest then that I read Joita Ferguson's June 8 letter to the editor (``Roanoke County needs more truancy-prevention efforts'') concerning what she thought might be done to better deal with truants such as her son.

Her son is testimony to the fact that if a student is determined to skip school, not even an individual whose sole function is to keep track of him could do so. A friend of Ferguson and her son volunteered to bring him to school, and to follow him from class to class. For approximately five months, the friend escorted her son to school and to classes. Even that supervision didn't keep Ferguson's son from skipping. When the friend would find out that he had left class, he would look in all the known hiding places. But when the student couldn't be found, the friend would wait at school until the end of the day, because he knew her son would show up for a ride home.

After her son skipped the first few times, Ferguson worked out a procedure with our attendance personnel for her to be called by 9 a.m. if her son wasn't in school. Under normal circumstances, due to the number of students who may be absent in a given day, it sometimes takes until the afternoon to get all parents called. Special accommodations are given, however, to notifying parents of students who are known to have a history of skipping.

In her letter she asked: ``What happened to the old-fashioned truant officer?'' Today, in Roanoke County, he's known as the visiting teacher.

With the able assistance of our visiting teacher - David Trumbower, who tracks down truants and ``encourages'' them to get back in school - we at William Byrd High School have cut our end-of-the-year dropouts from 26 for the 1993-1994 school year to eight dropouts for the year just ending. That is a decline of 70 percent and a fact of which we are very proud. Our goal is to cut our dropouts still further and to continue to do all possible to deter those who are determined to skip classes.

The Vinton-area member of the Roanoke County School Board, Mike Stovall, is proposing, with the wholehearted support of the William Byrd High School administration, that resource officers from the Roanoke County Police Department be placed in county high schools to serve as a deterrent to potential problems and to act on problems of a legal nature. We hope there will be public support for Stovall's proposal, and that it can be implemented soon.

We understand Ferguson's frustration. We, too, are frustrated with students like those she describes. We are also frustrated with those who say it's the schools that are the problem because we don't do enough. In public education in Roanoke County, ours is a constant effort to do that which is in the best interest of the child and his or her education.

Joyce E. Williams is an assistant principal of William Byrd High School in Vinton.

by CNB