Keeping Kids in Class Starts with Access
In our “Turning on the Lights” report, a self-represented litigant famously described navigating the Massachusetts court system as “wandering through a room with no lights on… you’d bump into something, you’d ask about it, and they’d give you a little flashlight.”
Today, for thousands of families across the Commonwealth, the path to consistent school attendance is shrouded in that same darkness.
When we talk about truancy, the public conversation often defaults to a narrative of “behavior,” the defiance of a student or the “non-compliance” of a parent. But at Massachusetts Appleseed, our larger work on education justice suggests a different, more systemic reality: truancy is not a character flaw, but rather it is a navigation and access crisis. In Massachusetts, a CRA (Child Requiring Assistance) is a Juvenile Court case schools can file when a child is experiencing significant attendance or behavioral challenges. Schools may file a CRA for chronic truancy, repeated refusal to follow school rules, or other behaviors that substantially interfere with school functioning. When a family is handed a Child Requiring Assistance (CRA) filing for absences they couldn’t prevent, or for notices they couldn’t read or understand, the school system stops being a place of learning and starts being another dark room where families are left to stumble. From a previous Appleseed report, we know that nearly 1 in 4 Massachusetts residents speak a language other than English in the home, and our Commonwealth’s services and information is not meeting these needs; leaving thousands of people in the dark.
When the “lights are off,” the consequences aren’t just administrative, they are disciplinary. Our “Keep Kids in Class” report highlighted how exclusionary discipline and zero-tolerance policies disproportionately push students out of the classroom and into the school-to-prison pipeline. CRA cases function as an invisible form of pushout; rather than addressing a student’s underlying needs through school-based support, the system bypasses traditional suspension only to funnel them directly into the legal system.
By the time a family reaches a courtroom for a truancy hearing, the system has likely failed them several times over. If a parent never received a translated notice about their child’s absences, or if a student missed school because of a lack of reliable transportation that the school failed to help navigate, a court filing doesn’t solve the problem, it only deepens the crisis.
As we advocate for the Language Access and Inclusion Act, and reflect on our Justice Disrupted report, we are fighting for more than just translated documents; we are fighting for the “light switch.” We know that:
A single translated phone call or a clearly written notice in a family’s primary language can prevent a month of missed school days and a lifetime of legal involvement. Keeping students in class should always be the goal, never to push them into the legal system; as this furthers the school-to-prison-pipeline.
To “Keep Kids in Class,” we must ensure that the pathways to enrollment and attendance are accessible to everyone, regardless of the language they speak at home or their ability to navigate complex digital portals. Knowing that 10% of the Massachusetts population has limited English proficiency shows that we should work to provide language access.
10,000 Massachusetts high school students drop out each year; this number is impacted by discipline and zero tolerance policies (Keep Kids in Class, 2012).
True attendance is more than a presence in a seat; it is a continuous state of engagement and belonging, where the student’s attendance is a given rather than a struggle. True attendance shouldn’t require a flashlight or a lawyer. It requires a system that prioritizes communication over compliance and support over summons. As a Research and Policy Intern at Massachusetts Appleseed, Sara Milesi’s work has shown that when we turn on the lights, families don’t just comply, they thrive!
We must shift from punishing truancy as a behavioral choice to addressing it as a crisis of access. It’s time to stop giving families flashlights and finally turn on the lights for every student in Massachusetts.
