SUPPORT MOUNTS FOR DAYTIME CURFEW IN COVINGTON

by Michael Monks 

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Covington Schools Superintendent
Lynda Jackson speaks in support
of curfew

The City of Covington's attempt to impose a curfew on kids aged six to eighteen continued Monday night with a public meeting at City Hall. Roughly twenty citizens joined local leaders including Mayor Chuck Scheper, Superintendent Lynda Jackson, Commissioner Sherry Carran, two members of the school board, Chief of Police Lee Russo and city staff.
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The issue of truancy in Covington is a serious one with Covington Schools handling 13,211 unexcused absences last year. That is the same number as the much larger Dallas, Texas school district which lowered its unexcused absences to 13,800 from 22,805 after passing an ordinance that Covington's proposed curfew is modeled after. The ordinance would require all school-aged kids between the ages of six and eighteen to be in school or indoors during school hours. Otherwise, the police can stop a student and ask where the child is supposed to be.

City Solicitor Frank Warnock
explains that the curfew ordinance
would be constitutional

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Superintendent Jackson spoke on the negative effect truancy has on the graduation rate and the school's finances. In 2008, when Jackson ascended to the district's top job, unexcused absences cost Covington schools $1.1 million in state and federal funding, she said. Today, the loss is half that. "It's our job as a school district to work with neighborhoods to ensure these students are in school."
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Police Chief Lee Russo speaks (C), City
Manager Larry Klein at podium, Mayor
Chuck Scheper and Commissioner
Sherry Carran in foregorund

Christopher Gastright, Secretary of the Wallace Woods Neighborhood Association, which is adjacent to Holmes High School, said that that organization voted at its most recent meeting to support the curfew. Gastright witnessed the recent beating of a Holmes student at the hands of a gang from the alternative school that left the teen lying in a puddle of blood. "These kids were jumping up and down on the kid's face," Gastright said, describing the violent scene as one that happens more frequently in recent years. "These kids are being assaulted and corrupted in our neighborhood. I don't want to see another kid get stomped."
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Barry Johnson of the Mainstrasse neighborhood also spoke in favor of the curfew. "I know a lot of these kids would be good kids if they had parents like mine," Johnson said. "They don't have adult supervision, they don't have a family. This would give an opportunity for police to stop a child and ask, 'what's up'?"
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Jackson expressed the need for mentors for the students in her district. "We have over two-hundred students being mentored and their attendance improves," Jackson said. "We only need four-hundred more mentors and we won't need all these wrap-around services."
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Law enforcement present at the meeting also unanimously supported the curfew ordinance. Ken Kippenbrock, Director of Pupil Personnel and a sheriff's deputy joined Chief Lee Russo and Newport Police Corporal Larry Long in arguing that the curfew would offer another tool for officers that does not currently exist: the ability to pick up a child and return him or her to school, to home or to jail. Newport has had a curfew since 2001 also based on the Dallas model. "If a kid needs to be in school, it's a way to get him there, if a kid needs to be at home, it's a way to get him there," Long said. "Newport kids know that if they skip school, we will pick them up. They talk about it."
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One mother from Monte Casino that home-schools her children expressed concern that the ordinance may be unconstitutional. City Solicitor Frank Warnock said that the ordinance is crafted to follow constitutionality stating, "You have to use least-restrictive needs that can accomplish the goal."
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Ultimately, the goal is for better graduation rates and less daytime crime. "We had twenty-eight kids drop out of school in 2008," Jackson said, telling of how she studied twenty-six of their available records to dig deeper into what may have caused the drop-outs. "Some were special needs, some couldn't read. One had three children at eighteen. (But) they were all truant with thirty to forty days of being absent. If we don't graduate all those students, we'll never be able to work with Covington to eliminate the poverty issue we're facing."