WINFIELD - Since beginning its truancy diversion program, Putnam County Schools have not only seen truancy rates go down, but also dropout rates.
Putnam Circuit Court Judge Phillip Stowers spoke at the Putnam County School Board meeting Tuesday to discuss the program's effectiveness since its inception in the 2009-2010 school year.
Stowers asked the school board six years ago to develop a program dealing with truancy in Putnam County.
At that time, "there were nearly 400 cases of truancy, and about 10 percent made it to the court system," Stowers told the school board. "Kids were coming to court three, four or five months after being declared truant, and they had dropped out."
Shortly after the truancy program started, Stowers, with help from Putnam Magistrate Linda Hunt, again approached the school board and asked it to consider employing a school-based probation officer. The school board agreed.
The probation officer, who is paid about $78,000 annually including benefits, acts as a "liaison between the courts and the school system," Putnam Schools Superintendent Chuck Hatfield said.
"But the beauty of the probation officer, versus our attendance director, is that they have law enforcement privileges [and] it expands their authority a little farther than ours in working with some of these difficult cases," he said.
Between 2010 and 2014, the dropout rate in Putnam schools fell from 1.1 percent to about half a percent, according to data from the state Department of Education's ZoomWV website. During the same time frame, the number of truancy referrals dropped from 350 per school year to about 150.
The county's graduation rates also have increased since the truancy program began. The four-year graduation rate increased from 78 percent to 90 percent, while the five-year graduation rate rose from 83 percent to 87 percent, according to state Department of Education data.
"Not many school boards have the money, the effort and the foresight that you gentlemen did to get control of a problem that wasn't getting addressed," Stowers said.
Another benefit of the diversion program, Hatfield said, is that it helps school officials direct struggling students to the appropriate agencies to get the help they need.
Stowers also announced that Putnam County had received a $39,000 grant from the state Department of Education to help pay the cost of its truancy probation officer. The school board has paid the total cost of the officer since 2010.
Also at Tuesday's meeting, the school board voted unanimously to approve its updated Comprehensive Educational Facilities Plan. The school district updates the 10-year plan annually to show what's been accomplished in the past year and identify goals for the upcoming year.
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