Juvenile Truancy
Truancy is prosecuted as a Child in Need of Care case. Under state law, children between the ages of 7 and 18 are required to attend school. If a child is deemed truant by their school, then a referral is made to the District Attorney's Office. Upon receipt of a truancy referral from the school, our office has discretion about how that case is processed.
In most cases, a juvenile who is reported truant will be given an opportunity to work with the Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center in the "Case Manager" program. The student is assessed to see if the program is a good fit, and to gauge the student's willingness to work on these issues. If the student is accepted into the Case Manager program, then a Child in Need of Care filing would be avoided pending completion of the program. If the student has prior court involvement, or in some other way is not accepted into the program, then the matter would be referred to the District Court as a Child in Need of Care case.
Kansas statutes provide that a student is "truant" if they are absent without excuse, for a "significant portion" of the school day, for three consecutive days, or five days in a semester, or seven days in a school year. When that occurs, then the school is to provide notice to the student's parent or guardian . Once notice is received, then any further absences without excuse triggers a report to the District Attorney's Office .
If a truancy case is filed in District Court, then the assigned Judge has discretion to formulate a plan designed to meet the child's needs and get the child to attend school. In many instances, the court will direct the child be monitored on a "truancy plan." This means that a court services officer would supervise a child's attendance, and work with the child and family to make sure the child attends school. In extreme cases, the court has the authority to place a child outside the home to make sure the child gets an education.
For more information on truancy, please view our truancy brochure or contact our office at (913) 715-3149.
IMPORTANT NOTES:
- The forms listed above are in Adobe Acrobat 6.0 (.pdf) format and may not work with previous versions. The current version of Acrobat Reader is available free from Adobe's website.
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- Some computers have encountered problems when directly downloading forms into Acrobat Reader (as a plug-in) through Netscape or Internet Explorer. In many cases the forms will not download entirely and an error message will appear. If you have this or a similar problem, you should download the forms to your computer as described above.
- Johnson County does not provide support for problems downloading/printing using Adobe Acrobat Reader. We recommend you print a test page to ensure your printer works correctly with the Adobe software.
