Dive Brief:
- A special news investigation by BuzzFeed looks into the high number of Texas teenagers who have been jailed because of truancy-related fines.
- In the last three years, over 1,000 high school students have been sentenced to jail for charges that started from skipping class.
- One case cited in the article is that of Serena Vela, who owed the court $2,700 for skipping school and was sentenced to nine days in jail when she couldn't pay (the process is known as "jail-credit"). The irony of course, is that she ended up missing a week and half of school as a result.
Dive Insight:
This trend is particularly upsetting because the reason schools focus on truancy so much is to improve graduation rates. Pushing students into the criminal justice system doesn't typically breed good feelings about school, much less allow time to actually attend school.
On the same day that the BuzzFeed article was published, ThinkProgress reported that a high school in Nashville, TN, had 134 arrests since the start of the 2014-15 school year. The high number indicates that students are likely being arrested for minor infractions, much like the situation where skipping school is resulting in jail time.