Kids skipping school is just a phase, parents like to tell themselves. "My kid will grow out of it, right?" The answer is probably - wrong.
It is a well-documented fact that school failure is connected to lower income, serious adult crime and imprisonment. The best way to prevent children from entering a life of crime is to influence them early - and that is what Fulton County, Ga.’s Truancy Intervention Project Georgia (TIP) aims to do.
In 1991, former Fulton County Juvenile Court Judge Glenda Hatchett and Terry Walsh, then president of the Atlanta Bar Association, created TIP to combat the truancy problem in the county’s Juvenile Court system.
The TIP Web site, www.truancyproject.org, notes some of the problems associated with truancy in Georgia, including: one in four Georgia high school students does not graduate on time; Georgia has 16 counties (including Fulton), that rank among the 50 worst counties in the U.S. for high school dropout statistics; more than 88 percent of adult prison inmates in Georgia are high school dropouts and only 60.8 percent of Georgia children graduate from high school.
TIP hopes to change all that - and since its creation, the program has served more than 2,600 children in Fulton County, of which 2,072 did not return to Juvenile Court. That gives TIP a nearly 80 percent total success rate.
The process of helping children begins when they are summoned to Juvenile Court for truancy, and are then paired up with one or more TIP volunteers. These volunteers include attorneys, social workers and probation officers, whose job it is to help the student start regularly attending school and getting better grades, join extracurricular activities, get jobs and generally improve their lives. The ultimate goal is to make sure the student graduates from high school.
 Photo courtesy of the Fulton County Press Office
American Bar Association President-elect Karen Mathis (right) talks to (from left) Caren Cloud Barnes, export coordinator for the Truancy Intervention Project (TIP) and Judge Belinda Edwards during a meeting with Fulton Juvenile Court staff responsible for TIP. Mathis visited Atlanta to discuss the TIP program’s effectiveness in reducing the risk of children moving from school truancy to delinquency. |
C aren Cloud Barnes, staff attorney and TIP export coordinator, said, "The children served by TIP are very often in need of positive role models who represent all the aspects of life that they have yet to be exposed to. The volunteer’s role as an advocateÊis so rewarding because their involvement inÊthe lives of a TIP child is very often the most positive and supportive relationship that the children have and will have a lasting impact not only on the child, but on the volunteer as well."
Each year, TIP hosts three special events for those involved with the program. The first, the Holiday Adoption event, gives families with children in the program the opportunity to be "adopted" by an Atlanta law firm and receive gifts during the holiday season.
Winners for Life, another event, rewards those students in TIP who have succeeded with good attendance, conduct and grades. If the students miss fewer than five days of school in the fall semester, they can win tickets to an area amusement park or sporting event in the spring, and for the past five years have been treated to inspirational comments by baseball legend Hank Aaron.
The last event which is used to reward and motivate TIP participants, the Back to School Kickoff, includes a picnic lunch, a trip to the zoo and Cyclorama, and a school-supply giveaway to start their year off right.
While these programs encourage and motivate children to attend school and do well, Cloud Barnes stressed that "the volunteer is the key and is always the missing link The encouragement and guidance that TIP volunteers give their students make the differenceb between a child who will go on to commit delinquent actsÊand those who willÊbe empowered to take a different path as a result of their relationship with a TIP volunteer."
ÊSince 1997, Fulton County’s TIP has been used as a model for Juvenile Courts across Georgia. So far, the program is up and running in Hall, Gwinnett, Dougherty, Cobb, Newton, Chatham, Muscogee, Douglas, Laurens, Walker, Cherokee, Rockdale and Bibb counties. In addition, Floyd, Hart, Twiggs, Tift, DeKalb and Lumpkin counties are currently in the preliminary stages of implementation. TIP staff also provide materials and "tele-assistance" to areas outside of Georgia which have an interest in truancy intervention.
TIP collaborates with the Fulton County Juvenile Court, Atlanta city and Fulton County Public School Systems, the Atlanta and Georgia Bar Foundations, and other community-based outreach programs that work to serve children and families. In 2005, 20 percent of TIP’s revenue came from Fulton County, 42 percent from foundations, 15 percent from individuals and the remainder from other sources.
(For more information on Truancy Intervention Project Georgia, go to www.truancyproject.org.)