She argued in court in favor of California’s death penalty, and she threatened to jail parents of truant kids while she was the DA in San Francisco. It’s more complicated than those sound bites–like, it was her job to argue the state’s position–but you’ll get the sound bite opposition.
I don’t like Harris since I support 2A rights in addition to things like LGBTQ+ rights, and right to choose, but I like her odds of winning more than I liked Biden’s.
Truancy courts are not controversial. Literally holding a parent criminally liable for not sending their child to school. Maybe there’d be less Lord of the Flies gangs of tweenage criminals in every major city if truancy was better enforced.
They shouldn’t be. But I recall the way that they were framed at the time made them sound really bad. When you looked into it, and realized that no one had even gotten past the threatened with arrest part, it started to make a lot more sense.
Throwing people in prison does not benefit the children of those people.
And truancy courts don’t typically target far right homeschooler quiverfull families. They’re aimed squarely at Two Income Trap working families and poor single parents, already under the gun thanks to poor bussing policies, no statutory time off from work, and abysmal access to health care.
Truancy laws are a tool of the School-To-Prison Pipeline. They substitute a criminal mandate for accessible education.
Maybe there’d be less Lord of the Flies gangs of tweenage criminals in every major city if truancy was better enforced.
More daycare, free school breakfast/dinner programs, public after school activities, and less child homelessness would go much farther towards reducing delinquent kids than arresting their parents.
truancy courts don’t typically target far right homeschooler quiverfull families.
…Because they don’t have to. The homeschoolers are home schooling (or, at least claiming to do so), whereas truant kids aren’t being educated at all. If the parents that were going to truancy courts were home schooling kids, they could just say that and be done with it. (I’m no fan of home schooling; I think that it’s almost always a disservice to the kids. But it’s still a legal right.)
IIRC, Harris had other programs that she was using/working with to reduce truancy rates, and courts were the last-ditch effort for parents that refused to even show up for anything else. If I recall correctly–and please, fact check me here–no parents received any jail time for truancy while she was a DA. It was used as a tool to get parents to take truancy seriously.
And yes, I agree that school lunches, etc. would all help, But there’s only so many tools that a district attorney has to use. The DA can’t mandate a tax to cover daycare or after school activities; that’s the job of the city council or state legislature.
It’ll be interesting to see what minor controversy from her past that voters glom onto and equivocate with Trump’s blatant assault on democracy.
She argued in court in favor of California’s death penalty, and she threatened to jail parents of truant kids while she was the DA in San Francisco. It’s more complicated than those sound bites–like, it was her job to argue the state’s position–but you’ll get the sound bite opposition.
I don’t like Harris since I support 2A rights in addition to things like LGBTQ+ rights, and right to choose, but I like her odds of winning more than I liked Biden’s.
Truancy courts are not controversial. Literally holding a parent criminally liable for not sending their child to school. Maybe there’d be less Lord of the Flies gangs of tweenage criminals in every major city if truancy was better enforced.
They shouldn’t be. But I recall the way that they were framed at the time made them sound really bad. When you looked into it, and realized that no one had even gotten past the threatened with arrest part, it started to make a lot more sense.
Throwing people in prison does not benefit the children of those people.
And truancy courts don’t typically target far right homeschooler quiverfull families. They’re aimed squarely at Two Income Trap working families and poor single parents, already under the gun thanks to poor bussing policies, no statutory time off from work, and abysmal access to health care.
Truancy laws are a tool of the School-To-Prison Pipeline. They substitute a criminal mandate for accessible education.
More daycare, free school breakfast/dinner programs, public after school activities, and less child homelessness would go much farther towards reducing delinquent kids than arresting their parents.
…Because they don’t have to. The homeschoolers are home schooling (or, at least claiming to do so), whereas truant kids aren’t being educated at all. If the parents that were going to truancy courts were home schooling kids, they could just say that and be done with it. (I’m no fan of home schooling; I think that it’s almost always a disservice to the kids. But it’s still a legal right.)
IIRC, Harris had other programs that she was using/working with to reduce truancy rates, and courts were the last-ditch effort for parents that refused to even show up for anything else. If I recall correctly–and please, fact check me here–no parents received any jail time for truancy while she was a DA. It was used as a tool to get parents to take truancy seriously.
And yes, I agree that school lunches, etc. would all help, But there’s only so many tools that a district attorney has to use. The DA can’t mandate a tax to cover daycare or after school activities; that’s the job of the city council or state legislature.