March 2, 2011 – KSAT in San Antonio recently met with San Antonio ISD and spoke with them about their success using the Aim Truancy Solutions program to effectively reduce truancy and improve the lives of students.
SAN ANTONIO – According to Dave Udovich, San Antonio Independent School District’s executive director for secondary initiatives, truancy is an academic career killer.
“It’s probably the No. 1 issue that keeps students from moving ahead,” Udovich said.
The district has teamed up with Dallas-based AIM Truancy Solutions that tracks chronically truant students through a GPS device. The program is an alternative to paying steep fines for truancy, the district said. According to Udovich, fines have failed to be an adequate deterrent. Students are tracked by the device for a period of six weeks.
“When they leave to go to school, they grab their cell phone. They grab our device. What we’re able to do is sit behind in a monitoring center and we’re watching these kids go to school,” said Travis Knox, president of AIM Truancy Solutions.
The company said the device has had success in deterring students from skipping school, but the program incorporates some old-school methods, too.
“Students get a coach or a mentor with this company that checks in on them, gives them a call in the morning, and then calls them in the evening to see how their day went,” Udovich said.
The program appears to be doing the trick. According to Udovich, more than 90 percent of the students in the program have halted their chronic truancy.
“Within three weeks, they started to have passing grades,” Udovich said.
The GPS device gets some of the credit for the program’s success.
“It’s really just a tangible item that helps them know that somebody is watching to help support them in getting back into positive behavior,” Knox said.
However, students have indicated that its them mentoring that has really made the difference.
“There’s a significant other adult in their life that has conferences with them, that cares about them, that builds a relationship with them,” Udovich said.
As a result, SAISD officials have decided to extend the mentoring by an additional six weeks beyond the GPS monitoring period in hopes that it will push the chronic truancy rate down even further.
Source: KSAT, San Antonio