Parents whose children regularly play truant can now be sentenced to PRISON under new Missouri law – mom gets 15 days in jail after her first-grade son was absent for 13 days
- State Supreme Court upholds schools discretion to decide what ‘reasonable’ attendance means
- A quarter of the state’s students take classes less than 90 percent of the time
More parents can expect jail time if their children don’t attend school after a court upheld jail sentences for two mothers whose young children missed just two weeks over the course of a year.
Mothers Tamarae LaRue and Caitlyn Williams of Lebanon, Missouri, were jailed for failing to ensure “regular” attendance of their six- and seven-year-old children.
And their appeal was rejected on Tuesday by the Missouri Supreme Court, which insisted the state didn’t have to define what “normal” means.
“No Missouri parent would conclude that being ‘regular’ means anything less than their child attending school on the days the school is open,” said Supreme Court Justice Robin Ransom.
The Leclade County mothers were prosecuted by the Lebanon II school district, which demands an attendance rate of at least 90 percent.
Tamarae LaRue was sentenced to 13 days behind bars when the attendance of one of her four sons fell below the level the school deemed acceptable
LaRue, 32, was sentenced to 13 days after her son missed 15 days of first grade, while Williams was jailed for seven days after her daughter missed 16 days of kindergarten.
Williams alerted staff on some occasions, including dental appointments, a bad cough and a dose of ringworm, and LaRue, a mother of three other boys, also notified her son’s school of some illness absences.
But she started having panic attacks and feared she was being bullied in a state where nearly a quarter of students had less than 90 percent attendance at school in 2021/22.
“I was trying to bust my tail to make sure they had all the evidence they needed — all the doctor’s notes they needed — calling them while I was at the ophthalmologist,” LaRue told the Wall Street Journal from the gas station where she works.
Nearly 600 charges have been filed by state officials for violations of Missouri’s compulsory education law over the past five years.
Steve Jackson, the judge who jailed Williams in June 2022, admitted the law was a mess and said he hoped she would appeal.
“It’s an absolutely horrible statute,” he told the court.
But the state’s Supreme Court has left the law unchallenged, arguing that the mothers had been warned, opening the door to more jail sentences for parents.
Esther Elementary School sent Williams a letter in November 2021 after her daughter’s sixth unexplained absence, telling her thatThe Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education states that students must have an attendance rate of 90 percent or higher.
The deputy principal reportedly warned that the absences affected her daughter’s performance, and so did she charged with a “Class C misdemeanor of violating the Mandatory Attendance Act.”
The single mother was convicted by the Circuit Court which sentenced her to seven days in Laclede County jail.
LaRue was also contacted after six unexplained absences and later sentenced to 15 days in jail before her sentence was commuted to two years of probation.
“This absence was not excused by any circumstance provided by the statute,” the court wrote.
“Given the notification to each parent and the fact that each parent had control over their young child, there was evidence to support the conclusion that each parent was deliberately failing to get their child to attend school regularly.”
“School attendance is critical to a student’s academic, social and personal development,” says district spokeswoman Jacy Overstreet.
“Our first approach is to work with students, their families and our dedicated staff to identify the underlying reasons for the absences.”