Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, June 29, 2010,
Item 12
Number 12 is to consider and take appropriate action on recommendations from the travis county/city of austin/austin independent school district joint subcommittee regarding chronic absenteeism in public schools. A, authorize the county judge to sign the joint resolution on chronic absenteeism in public schools on behalf of the travis county commissioners court. B, direct staff to incorporate recommendations of the joint subcommittee in an interlocal agreement between travis county/city of austin and austin independent school district addressing chronic absenteeism in public schools. C, authorize the expenditure of $16,000 in fiscal year 2010 for one-third of the cost of a data management system. And the item doesn't say it, but ms. Fleming has found that money in her current budget. D to s. To notify the planning and dujt office of the court's intention to provide $15,000 in the fiscal year 2011 budget for one-third of the maintenance cost of a data management system. And e would be other related issues. Ms. Fleming?
>> good morning, sherri fleming, executive manager for health and human services and veterans services. Judge, commissioners, i know we have a rather lengthy resolution before you today, and i think i can probably briefly summarize that to say that there's been tremendous work underway between staff of both the austin independent school district, the city of austin and travis county, and that work is a result of an interest from your representatives as well as representatives from the austin independent school district board and the city council to work together to address a critical issue, we believe, with students in our community. And that would be the truancy issues that we're contending with as well as student mobility. The truancy means that kids basically aren't going to school. The mobility, issue, however, is one that i think has not received as much attention in that it reflects the movement of students from school to school throughout the school year and has just as much of a devastating effect on that child's progress as not going to school at all. So those two issues we feel have been critical for the three bodies to work together to figure out how to address the issues that impact families in our community in order to increase outcomes in terms of the attendance and the actual number of days that kids are attending school and receiving their education. We know that our educational system is the foundation of development and prosperity in our community and it starts with us creating an environment in the school system that is welcoming and that supports children going to school. So as a result of staff's work over the last year, we came with lots of recommendations, which as you can imagine our elected bodies told us to go back and sort of synthesize those down to the most critical. And there are lots of initiatives going on in the community and so we were able to land on really three basic recommendations with the first being that a leadership council chaired by myself, mel waxler, who is the general counsel for aisd and burt lamb breast buttet cancer ras with the skin would chair a committee to develop plans and implementation strategies for various ideas around student truancy and mobility. It certainly won't stop with the three of us. There will be a tremendous staff committee across all three bodies that will be participating. We also would like to establish a youth council who can give us some information and input. One thing we've discovered is if we want to know why kids don't want to go to school, we need to ask them and many thesm have already given us some incredible information about why they don't go to school. And then finally we think it's important to support the family resource center model that is being developed in the school systems by providing a data management system that will allow us to be able to track the services that we hope to be able to call upon from both services that are funded in travis county, funded in the city of austin and funded in aisd. So it's an idea of better coordination between services that are pretty much already paid for. So that would be a summary of what we're asking you to consider today. And judge biscoe and commissioner gomez have been participating on your behalf and so judge biscoe may have some things he would like to say also.
>> judge biscoe says the court needs to know about the money.
>> okay. The first year, which would be fiscal year 2010, would involve the actual purchase of the data management system at a cost of approximately $48,000, which will be shared among the three entities. So that works out to be about 15, $16,000 per entity. Those funds -- those one-time funds have been identified in the health and human services budget. I think your backup speaks to some unspent funds that we have in our workforce development line item. I can assure you that those funds do not represent any reduction in services. It has to do with some administrative -- some lag in aig p.g.a. Out some administrative -- some lag in paying out some administrative funding in projects that we have. So we believe this to be an appropriate use of those funds in that keeping our kids in school would have to be the foundation of any workforce foundation initiative that we might recommend. In terms of next year's commitment, it would involve the maintenance costs, which do from the $48,000 for the initial investment to about $36,000 a year which drops to between 12 and $15,000 per entity. And we request that that amount be added to the preliminary budget for fiscal year 2011.
>> we spoke in terms of a three-year commitment. Sort of three-year pilot. So although we budget annually, we basically would be committing to seeing the pilot through, which would be roughly a three-year commitment.
>> yes, sir, that's correct.
>> there's another little piece of this that is directly related, but not formally part of this. And that is that the jp's and municipal judges and the juvenile truancy court all have a whole lot of money. And so at our next meeting we will discuss with them what they do in the truancy/absenteeism area. We really ought to collaborate a whole lot more than we do. And i think the jp's probably have half a million dollars, and so far we have spent probably, what, five or 10% of the case management fee that they get? But there is some question about what the strategy should be and so there would be some effort to get the municipal judges, the jp's and the truancy court that is under the district judges and kind of part of the juvenile justice system to gather those three pieces. And so that funding is separate and apart from this, but it seems to me that if we can get all of them pointed in the same direction, that has to impact this. But we have come together. The good thing about this is that the data that we seek would help us evaluate and improve this initiative. Everybody seems to be eagerly in support, which you can't say about every collaboration. But i think that's a good thing. And the subcommittee has worked a long time to get to where we are today and so i feel real good about it and i think this would be a good thing for us to do, but we ought to be serious about evaluating it and in two or three years we ought to be able to make the call on whether or not it's working. The other thing is that part of the initiative is for us to try to identify outside grant funding that we can pursue as a collaboration, and so -- we've committed to do that and ought to do it.
>> judge, i would like to thank you and commissioner gomez for taking the leadership role. And there's another program that i think that really needs beefing up and need some -- i think some strong attention in this collaborative effort, and i guess my point basically goes back to what i discussed earlier in item 4, and saying that -- i know sherri brought up a question. They asked the students actually, the person that's participating in this, what can we do to assist and anything like that. Why are you not coming to school? Why are you having these chronic absentee numbers that you have. And they gave you some answers. I'd like to know what some of those answers were, sherri, if you don't mind, from the students that were asked those questions of why they are not going to school.
>> some. Things we heard had to do -- some of the things we heard had to do with not feeling welcome at school.
>> not feeling welcome?
>> not feeling welcome at school. Feeling that some campuses had better, in quotation marks, opportunities than others within our city.
>> like what? An example of better opportunities.
>> specialty educational programs, for example. Some of the -- a lot of the conversation with the students really had to do with the idea that students have to work to help their families. And so it's not necessarily a choice between going to school, it is a choice that my income is necessary for my family to meet its basic needs. And so the school schedule and the work schedule don't always work together. And of course, you know, students are the first to acknowledge that they learn the system and they use it to their advantage. And so i commend those students who were very honest with us and really indicated that, you know, if we could make a stronger statement to them when they're missing school that they would likely continue to come.
>> right. And i guess that kind of dove tails probably in some of the things that i brought up earlier. And that's the working aspect. And i know that there are some students that do work to assist families. And what i'm trying to drive to, sherri, is that under the -- under certain programs and as far as what aisd was doing in the past, as i stated earlier, students that get credit actually for working and yet still get credit toward their degree or either have a g.e.d. Opportunity, yes, i'm missing school, but i'm missing school under this type of program whereby i'm still going in the direction i want to go, i'm assisting, da, da, but i still have an opportunity to still get a diploma. And so i was trying to make sure that those working opportunities are still, you know -- are there and those conditions exist whether we want that to happen or not, they're still there. And on the other question that i had, did you have a specific or was there a specific age group of students that we looked at in this particular survey environment where a question was asked of a person that in the chronic age group of being absent, what is that age group probably, starting from what age to what age as far as a range is concerned?
>> middle school age through the senior high school level for the most part.
>> senior high school?
>> certainly there are issues that arise with elementary age students, but often times have more to do with parental choices than student choices. But once we move into the middle school level, then we start looking at -- and certainly some of those parental choices do come into play there, but we also sort of see a more consistent pattern. So of course by the time kids are in middle school and they begin to miss school, they are more likely to stay on that path without some intervention. So it becomes really i think critical if we can address it early on and address in a wraparound fashion because often times, especially with student mobility, parents are moving because of job opportunities and transportation, and the cost of rental properties and things of that nature. So it's addressing the child's attendance at school, but also providing resources to the families. And that's what the family resource centers have been doing. So i can tell you that while we tend to talk more about the money that we invest, you are also investing significant staff time as well as your partner both at the city and aisd to really talk through these issues and align and look at what exists in the system that we can apply for some of these concerns. And i think that is truly the value of our collaboration.
>> which is i think real good because i know the workforce is also a part of this, but i'm concerned, especially since you brought up the age group, that even up through the senior year of a person in high school -- and is it still just appears to me that if aisd was to maybe, as i stated earlier, supply an opportunity for a vocational skill type education may address -- and i said may because i don't know. May address some of the chronic absentee situations that we're dealing with right now. Right now there are -- right now under the absentee program when persons are cited for chronic absences and things of that nature, they issue -- i think there's a citation or something that's issued for those students. And of course those students have to appear before the jp, but the point is the jp type situation, the parents end up dealing with this and the parents are the ones that have to pay the amount of money for that student being absent. An example i think ranged from 300 to $500, first offense i think 300, second offense of that same behavior of chronically being absent of $500, which is a real drain i guess on the parents also. But -- and my question is on the money that's accumulated under the current system of being absent from school, going before the jp or whomever, whichever one is looking at it, where or how is -- is that money reinvested back into the program to address some of the chronic absentee situations that we have? Do you know what happens to that money?
>> i don't. I know that the fund that the judge references has to do with a fee that is assessed at the jp level in some of these cases, but in terms of the fines and fees, i'm not an expert on that.
>> it would be good to know --
>> we can find that out for you.
>> please find that out because right now currently parents are paying citations, per se, because of the student being out. And those things range from 3 to $500, it was brought to my attention. So i think it's something that we can maybe look at and see how that money is reinvested or where it goes. I don't really know.
>> we will certainly try to find that out, commissioner. I think the main objective here, though, is to reframe the conversation. You know, we certainly can continue to bring kids and families into court to talk about this oish or we can talk about some of the root causes. I think where this data management system will come in is that families are confronted with these issues and referred to their family resource centers within the district. We will actually collect some good information on what are the challenges that lead to the kids not being in school or, you know, sort of being engage understand this sort of mobile scenario where they move from school to school within the year. So i think this data management system is really going to be critical and i think we should and have a responsibility to use technology to find out some of the answers to these questions and be able to report those back to you in the way of performance.
>> right. And this is my final question. Some of the students that have been involved in some of these things are looking for employment opportunities. They have no interest not as far as going to school, they want to work. I'm saying at the high school level and things like that. And still be able to -- i still would like to still get my g.e.d. While i'm doing what i'm doing. I want to make sure if those students or some of the folks are saying these kind of things, it ought to be something that aisd again should pick up and we can maybe reduce some of these instances of folks being absent. So that's my concern.
>> i believe by working together it will identify dpaps for all of us, commissioner. So i certainly would prewarn you that i'll be back to talk about this again? But i think that that is the advantage of having the three entities work together because it does not become a singular entity's financial burden, it becomes the responsibility of the community as a whole.
>> i agree. Thank you.
>> those truancy courts at the district court level, municipal court level, jp level, are not part of this.
>> they are not part of this at this point.
>> we hope to get them involved as soon as possible.
>> yes, absolutely.
>> and the case management fee is dedicated to case management or truancy cases if there's a five dollar fee. So to the extent that it's collected, that money is dedicated to case management of the truancy cases.
>> that's correct.
>> and my guess is that those other fines and fees, a little bit goes to travis county, the rest to the travis county.
>> i think that's -- i think that's the standard.
>> but the imposition is high, the collection rate is low, i can tell you that from the jp's. And that's the reality that we're dealing with. Of course, a lot of the -- a lot of the families really can't afford those high fines.
>> that's part of the point, judge, i was bringing up. That 300 and 500-dollar fee that's being imposed on some of these folks is just -- it's eating their lunch.
>> an effective case management and data collection, these initiatives working together ought to put us in a much better position to make substantial positive impact, which we're not making yet.
>> judge, may i ask sherri one thing that i am concerned about -- this is a perception concern, although i am convinced personally that this is definitely -- definitely, definitely needed. I just want to give you the opportunity perhaps to address some of the perception concerns that our initial investment is in a database. And the reason -- i wanted to make clear to the audience that the reason for that is because we have some very good programs going on across our community. But they are mostly for those who self-select as needing help. With this kind of database we can go beyond those who self-select who are frankly the easiest to serve to those who are not self-selecting because they're so in the weeds. And i think that that is a critical issue for us and we have identified over the last couple of years some of thoz gaps, but we really need, afters the medical trial who was here earlier, expressed a need to -- we know there's an issue and we do have some really good tools to address those issues, but we need to know which patients need what tool. And that is what we're after here.
>> absolutely. Commissioner, that certainly is the -- what we're after. We also know that there's some tremendous things going on and we apply those things, which things really work, which things don't work as well, so maybe we need to spend a little less time there, a little more time somewhere else. So all of those things we will be able to capture as a part of this database. And it is really just the foundation of the work that staff hopes to do in term of connecting families to resources that they may not be connected that you already provide, that the city provides and even that the school district provides. And then what gaps exist. What it would have been great to have if we would have had this one particular program, because we see that for a lot of families that would have made a difference.
>> yeah.
>> any other discussion or questions, comments?
>> i think we're moving in the right direction, judge. I appreciate y'all's leadership on this.
>> in that case i move approval of 12 a, b, c and d.
>> second.
>> discussion of the motion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you very much for your hard work.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, June 29, 2010 2:35 PM
