Civic Center — In the wake of Mayor Bloomberg's announcement earlier this month that his office had launched a citywide campaign to combat chronic school absenteeism and truancy, some parents and education advocates are waiting to learn details of the city's plan.

The task force driving the initiative doesn't contain parents, religious leaders or other grassroots community members, noted Victoria Bousquet, a parent leader with Coalition for Educational Justice.

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Kelly Virella
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"At what point do you intend to involve the community?" she asked during an interview with City Limits. "Is it going to be once the horse is out of the barn? Are you going to have any town hall meetings? How are these decisions going to be made?"

She and others said they fear the initiative might rely too heavily on interventions that are punitive, such as arresting students and launching child welfare investigations that could ultimately lead to the termination of parental rights. "I know part of this is let's get the parents, let's the community, let's get the police department," Bousquet said. "But we don't want to criminalize these children."

But John Feinblatt, the mayor's chief policy adviser and a member of the task force, says enforcement is not the focus.

"You don't have to put a group together like this if all you're going to do is arrest people," Feinblatt said in a phone interview. "That would be a pretty easy process. Why would you have Homeless Services at the table? Why would you have Health and Mental Hygiene at the table?"

Feinblatt was referring to the multiagency nature of the task force, which comprises the departments of education, police, health, homeless services and youth and community development as well as the Administration for Children's Services.

"Across the country departments of education and mayors and researchers are all talking about the fact that we need to make sure that we're as creative as possible to cut down on truancy and absenteeism," Feinblatt said, adding that the multi-agency approach was a reflection of a realization that "We can't work on this in silos. If we want to solve this we have to act like one city."

The reason the task force is restricted to city agencies, Feinblatt says, is because that's where the coordination problems are. "This begins with all the city agencies working together," he said. "But there's a parallel effort to get input from as many different stakeholders as possible."

The task force aims to roll out the out the first set of initiatives at the start of the 2010-2011 school year. According to a press release the mayor issued this month, the campaign will place a heavy emphasis on providing additional social services to chronically absent students and their families. The press release said the campaign will develop several new protocols: one for strengthening school partnerships with community-based organizations, with service providers and with law enforcement; one for engaging and supporting chronically absent and truant students and families; and one for using absenteeism data to alert parents/guardians and other necessary stakeholders about absences.

The campaign also aims to develop data-driven models for identifying and responding to students and schools at greatest risk of chronic absenteeism, the press release said, and to strengthen NYC's current truancy-related policies and practices.