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Ypsilanti Community Schools Superintendent Scott Menzel.

(Daniel Brenner I The Ann Arbor News)

The number of students with 10 or more unexcused absences in the Ypsilanti Community Schools district is staggering.

In the 2013 and 2014 school year, 41 percent of students in kindergarten through grade 12 recorded least 10 unexcused absences, which will soon be considered "chronic" per a new Ypsilanti Township ordinance.

At its April 15 meeting, the Ypsilanti Township Board of Trustee approved the first reading of an ordinance that will make it a misdemeanor for parents to allow their kids to miss more than 10 unexcused days of school.

The charges will be sent to the district court, and the parent will get a notice to appear before a magistrate.

Officials say once a parent is in the court system, they will likely have the opportunity to work with the school to get the child back in the classroom regularly.

“The goal is not intended to be punitive and the end result and the goal we want to achieve is to get the child back into the classroom and get a solid education so they can be a productive member of the community as an adult,” said Mike Radzik, director of the township's office of community standards.

The ordinance will apply only to parents in Ypsilanti Township whose kids attend YCS and Lincoln Consolidated School districts. The Township Board of Trustees will vote on the ordinance's second reading at one of its May meetings.

Lincoln Schools saw lower "chronic" truancy rates of 5.4 percent, but Superintendent Ellen Bonter said she remains concerned.

Officials may also soon meet with the city of Ypsilanti’s attorneys to discuss the possibility of creating an ordinance there, so all kids and parents in the two districts are covered.

“If a student misses a day per week or a day every other week, it adds up and has same cumulative effect as missing a bunch of days in one chunk,” said Scott Menzel, YCS’s superintendent. “Part of what we are trying to do is - we’ve seen data that says you can close the achievement gap when kids are in school.”

Bonter also highlighted how disruption in routine interferes in progression of lessons and underscored that a chronically absent child is always trying to make up or catch up.

The new ordinance gives authorities a tool to nip these issues in the bud, she said.

“We need to intervene on a parental level. In severe or more extreme cases it is possible within the township that the parent is unable to get their child to school or his or her child through the public school system,” she said. ‘The township now has some leverage on that. It can connect the parent to the court or other help that can open some doors and get help to the child through some means.”

Officials say the issues aren’t only at the middle and high school levels. It also has become a problem in the elementary schools, though no data was immediately available.

“It’s just extraordinarily disheartening to hear the stories from school employees who communicate or try to communicate with the parents about why kids have missed so many days this year,” Radzik said. “The sheer volume at the elementary school level was disheartening to say the least, and we hope this has a positive impact and helps the children get a good education.”

Ypsilanti Township Attorney Angela King drafted the legislation. She explained that after a child misses 10 unexcused days, the Sheriff’s Office liaison at the school and township’s legal department are notified. The legal department contacts the district court, which sends a letter letting a parent know that there is an arraignment.

She said the recommendation would be for a deferred sentence in which the judge doesn’t immediately sentence a parent, but waits three to six months to see if the issue is resolved, allowing the case to be dismissed. If it isn’t resolved, King said, then a parent would be brought back in to answer to the judge as to why the child is continuing to be absent.

"Our goal is to see to it that children are in school and if there is some kind of difficulty, then we’re going to reach out to whichever community services we need to and the schools to try and solve the problem so these kids are back in class," King said.

The township also recently approved the second reading of a change to an existing truancy ordinance that requires that students between 6 and 17 years old be in school, which reflects a change in state law in 2009.

The old ordinance also says kids skipping school can only be ticketed if they are on public property. The updated ordinance eliminates that language to allow law enforcement officers to ticket kids who are caught skipping school in a private residence, for example.

Tom Perkins is a freelance reporter for The Ann Arbor News.