SK> Even as President Clinton praised the city of Monrovia's innovative
SK> anti-truancy efforts Monday, students at Monrovia High School debated
SK> the effectiveness of the policies.
SK> The city's anti-truancy law requires police officers to hand out $125
SK> tickets to youths who are caught outside school without a valid 
SK> excuse.
SK> Besides, said Paul Bower, 15, "teachers don't care if you ditch.
SK> If you show up to class and you're stoned and stuff, they don't like
SK> that, but they don't care if you ditch."
SK> Teachers would disagree. So would parents. So would Clinton.
    I don't know anything about the socioeconomic makeup of Monrovia, but I'd 
tend to agree with that student.
    Any article that implies that _all_ parents care if their kid cuts class 
or cuts school is just reprinting a news release.  I know better because I 
was a friend of my HS's attendance secretary, and she dealt with many parents 
who didn't give a hoot if their kid came or not.  Many parents even wrote 
preposterous excuses to keep their kid from being penalized for truancy 
(suspended!), and I saw those excuses on the attendance bulletin that the 
attendance secretary put out daily.
    At my HS, which had kids from all socioeconomic backgrounds, poor kids 
just cut and didn't care about getting suspended, but middle-class parents 
and rich parents wrote the preposterous excuses.  By mid-year, at least 60 
kids (out of 1300) had missed 1/3 of class days...without any real medical 
excuse.
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