County works on dealing with truancy
By Terry Murry on Friday, August 9th, 2024 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories
UMATILLA COUNTY – Umatilla County Commissioner Cindy Timmons says that there is widespread interest in addressing a truancy problem that has arisen as a result of the pandemic. Originally, she was seeking to draft an ordinance, but a meeting with Judge Dan Hill and other stakeholders convinced her that there could be better ways to address the problem of parents not returning their children to school.
She said many of those students are neither home schooled nor enrolled in online programs.
“You’ve got kids even post-kindergarten, second, third grade that have not been in a classroom,” she said.
The city of Pendleton has a daylight curfew designed to keep students in class. However, Police Chief Chuck Byram said he welcomes any work that can be done to work with parents and guardians who might be choosing that school is not for them.
“Keeping the parents involved, keeping parents held to account for their children and their behaviors about what they’re doing outside of their view is a positive thing,” he said.
Timmons said the goal is to help children and that Hill is also committed to devising a plan.
“A statistic that he (Hill) gave us that I thought was so interesting – 95 percent of everybody that stands in front of him in his courtroom do not have a high school education,” she said.
