Off The Streets Havermale Truancy Center Is A Place For Kids To Take Stock And Get Help Returning To School
A month ago, police picked up a cold, hungry 12-year-old runaway who had been sleeping in Franklin Park and took her to the Spokane Truancy Center at District 81’s Havermale Alternative School.
The girl hadn’t eaten for two days and had just a long, quilted coat to keep her warm. She preferred living at the park to home, said truancy center director Kathe Renner.
Renner fed the girl a hot school lunch, then started helping the girl unravel her sad, complicated life.
Her family was called. District administrators spent time with the girl to work on an individual program. A local hospital - where the girl had been undergoing psychiatric treatment - was contacted. A runaway report filed with the police was updated.
The truancy center, opened this fall under the collaborative efforts of the Spokane Police Department and Spokane School District 81, was designed to be a liaison between truants and their parents and a holding pen so boring that students would loath to return.
But cases such as the one involving the 12-year-old runaway have expanded the scope of the center’s activities. No other youth program in Spokane operates as a point of contact for social service programs, police and school officials; none has two police officers actively looking for teens.
“This one has more teeth because you have the SPD out there,” said Keith Jones, a counselor at the center.
Telephone numbers for the Community Mental Health Center and a state-run juvenile shelter are listed next to numbers for middle-school guidance counselors on the truancy center’s phone list. Juvenile court probation officer Kelly Porter is a frequent visitor.
“It’s ending up being more of a real collaboration than we really thought,” said Lyn Erickson, Havermale Alternative School principal and one of the architects of the program. “It’s not a program to punish kids. The purpose is to get them off the streets and into school.”
More than 230 students - more than half of them from North Side schools - have been picked up by police and sent to the truancy center since it opened Sept. 25.
Renner said most of them are the kind of kids the center is targeting - average students with no criminal record who are experimenting with deviancy.
When the kids come in, Renner or Jones arranges for parents to pick up their children and asks the students to fill out a questionnaire. A few students - one as young as 12 - walk out, but most are surprisingly cooperative and complete the voluntary survey.
“They get bored enough to do anything,” said Renner.
And then Jones lets them vent - about family, friends, school, work, drugs, sex or violence. He takes what he calls “the real world” approach, telling kids in straight talk how life will be in five years without a high school education.
“They need to have the language of accountability,” said Jones, who has spent his career in social service and counseling programs. “The term ‘work ethic’ has no meaning for some of these kids.”
Sometimes there is no solution. The 12-year-old girl was returned to the hospital for more psychiatric care after district administrators helped tailor an education plan, but little else could be changed.
But others have responded. Only seven students have come back twice.
The program is modeled after one in Salt Lake City. District 81 administrators and police spent a day at the Salt Lake City truancy center in May and returned with glowing praise.
Daytime crime in that city - the type most committed by students - dropped by about half and 60 percent of the students brought to the center were not seen again.
It is too early to analyze daytime crime data in Spokane, police said.
The center has a budget of $62,980, mostly for the salaries of Renner and Jones. The salaries of officers Sean Nemec and Larry House are funded by a federal grant that also helps pay the salaries of neighborhood resource officers.
Businesses have helped defray costs. AT&T donated cellular phones and air time for Nemec and House.
The Spokane truancy center has been averaging about seven students a day, but the flow of students has slowed, said Nemec. He was not sure why.
Last Thursday, Nemec found just one girl as he cruised North Spokane for two hours. A Havermale student sent to the center by a teacher said youths know it is not wise to be “hangin”’ on the streets.
He said students hate the truancy center because it is so boring. “You don’t want to be stuck here,” said the 15-year-old boy. “We go into NorthTown, go to my friend’s apartment. His mom leaves and we chill all day.”
Even without large numbers, Renner, Jones and the two police officers have their hands full.
Last Thursday, the mother of a 13-year-old Garry Middle School student called asking for help in getting the girl to school. The girl, claiming to be sick, missed an appointment at the school to talk about repeated absences.
Nemec knocked on the North Mayfair apartment door a few minutes later.
The girl, lying in bed and claiming she was sick, cried and swore at her mother as she got dressed. “I hate you. I’m going to kill you,” said the girl.
The girl tried to delay by taking a bath, but Nemec pounded on the bathroom door. “You’ve got two minutes. I’m not kidding.”
“I’m at the end of my rope,” said the mother. The girl has never known her father.
As Nemec drove to the center, he talked to the girl laying down in the back seat of the police car. “If you have an education, you can provide for yourself and other people. You can be anything - anything. You don’t have to be pumping gas or washing windows.”
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