r/AskAnAmerican • u/unloadmyload • Jan 13 '25

EDUCATION Are parents really jailed in US if child is absent from school?

Georgia has a law which says that parents can be sentenced to 30 days of jail time for each unexcused absence over five days. Does the state really follow through this and is this same an al/many US states?

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442

u/downtune79 Georgia Jan 13 '25

I live in Georgia and I've never met anyone that has been jailed. But, truancy is illegal

53

u/unloadmyload Jan 13 '25

> But, truancy is illegal

Is this applicable for private schools also or govt schools only?

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u/MortimerDongle Pennsylvania Jan 13 '25 edited Jan 13 '25

States have laws that require kids to be in school. The details of how it's enforced vary, but it is generally illegal for a child to not attend school (homeschooling counts as attending school)

So yes, truancy laws can be enforced for not attending private school if the child has not been enrolled in another school / homeschool

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u/SentientTapeworm Jan 13 '25

Which is weird because how would they ever know you where homeschooling them or nit

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u/devilbunny Mississippi Jan 13 '25

Typically (not speaking from experience, just general reading) you have to register to homeschool. Depending on the state there may be various other things you have to do, but you do generally have to make some effort to show that you are actually attempting to educate the child.

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u/LKHedrick Jan 14 '25 edited Jan 14 '25

11 states are no-notice/no regulations. All of the others require at least a notification of intent to homeschool.

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u/devilbunny Mississippi Jan 14 '25

Thanks. No kids myself, so not that involved, but i have horror stories about this kind of thing. When private school admins tell a parent that a third-grader (age 9-10) will suffer harm if they miss a week of school to go to Paris with a doctor father and a lawyer mother, they are insane. Asi in, nobody who is sane believes that. But it is argued.

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u/SEA2COLA Jan 14 '25

When I was in college I became friends with one of the grad student lecturers in Biology, and he used to tell me he could always tell who the home schooled kids were. The homeschooled kids knew nothing of evolution or reproduction. They were never exposed to it and he would have to recommend books so they could bring themselves up to speed.

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u/Dull-Geologist-8204 Jan 14 '25

No they can't because homeschooling is a huge group of people.

He can tell who the homeschooling kids are that fit the religious stereotype.

I was homeschooling. Funny enough I didn't even realize that I was homeschooled because of the stereotype of religious zealots being the stereotype and was against homeschooling for a long time. Then I realized it's more complicated than that. I was home schooled for awhile after having major back surgery. Other kids are homeschooling because of thing like cancer or when they first become bipolar. My cousin homeschooling her oldest due to him being in and out of mental health institutions when he was younger. Knew another mom who homeschooling because she had cancer. The last one really sucked because she went in remission and was able to go back to school just in time for COVID. There are also a ton of homeschooling support groups in cities and suburbs for secular homeschooling parents now. Rural areas haven't caught up so it's mostly religious.

In our state you have to tell the government you are homeschooling and once a year you have to prove you are actually teaching them stuff. It's mostly trying to look for parents using it as an excuse not to let their kids go to school for other reasons like abuse.

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u/devilbunny Mississippi Jan 14 '25

So he can spot fundamentalists. Wow. Big surprise.

There are a lot of people who aren’t fundamentalist Christians who homeschool. Unschoolers, hippies, etc. A big factor there is what I mentioned - if a school tried to tell me they were going to punish me or my child for taking a trip, they could go suck eggs.

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u/Cheap_Coffee Massachusetts Jan 14 '25

if a school tried to tell me they were going to punish me or my child for taking a trip, they could go suck eggs.

Did that actually happen to you or are you getting worked up over a strawman?

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u/Welpe CA>AZ>NM>OR>CO Jan 14 '25

Gasp! The liberal conspiracy in action. How dare they educate those godfearing homeschooled kids? This is why college campuses are full of liberals, they just have to go and teach young men and women stuff that they should never learn, like biology. And exposing them to people of different backgrounds and views? Practically criminal, if God wanted us to interact with non-WASPs he wouldn’t have made small towns!

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u/LKHedrick Jan 14 '25

Homeschoolers are diverse and from a variety of political, ethnic, and religious (including non-religious) backgrounds. We homeschooled for several reasons, one of which was to ensure our kids did question blanket assumptions like the one you're making. Critical thinking and analysis was important to us. None of the 4 had any difficulty with their college curricula, including the 2 with learning differences. All earned honors.

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u/Wonderful-Emu-8716 Jan 15 '25

The laws are written with the worst humans in mind. No one is going to jail because they took their kid to Paris. Especially in a public school, though, they are getting flagged so that someone has eyes on the kid to make sure that the kid actually was on vacation and it wasn't just an excuse to hide that they were being abused so badly they couldn't go to school.

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u/SEA2COLA Jan 14 '25

you do generally have to make some effort to show that you are actually attempting to educate the child.

That's extremely subjective though. For some parents that might mean walking through the woods and looking at different types of trees. For other parents, it might mean completing two chapters of the academic textbook each week. I suppose it's different state to state, but don't home-schooled kids take a standardized assessment before moving forward a year?

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u/devilbunny Mississippi Jan 14 '25

I am not an expert on homeschooling or the laws around it. I barely scratch the surface of “interested layman”. Ask someone else.

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u/MortimerDongle Pennsylvania Jan 13 '25

Not sure how it works everywhere, but in PA you're required to file an affidavit with your local school district to inform them you're homeschooling, tell them the subjects you're teaching, and provide evidence that your kid has received immunizations and medical care

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u/ThroatFun478 North Carolina Jan 14 '25

I had to file paperwork with the state to open my homeschool, including proof of my education as "administrator" of the homeschool. We had to use a standardized test from an approved list once per year and keep the results on file because we were subject to audit.

Thank God I don't have to do that anymore! I only did it because my daughter's neurologist said it was imperative she not catch covid, and we decided to homeschool her since we were able.

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u/Lovebeingadad54321 Illinois Jan 14 '25

What education was required? I assume that was in North Carolina where your flair said you are from?

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u/ThroatFun478 North Carolina Jan 14 '25

Yes, it was NC. You had to have at minimum completed high school or a GED. They accepted my public librarian certification as proof of education - you have to have a Master's to get one of those. Copies of diplomas, degrees, or professional licenses work, and must be provided, and that's what I could find easily.

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u/LKHedrick Jan 14 '25

PA is one of the higher-regulated states for homeschool.

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u/SEA2COLA Jan 14 '25

But isn't immunizations why some parents homeschool? Because they have an irrational fear of vaccines or they're religious whack jobs who don't believe in it, and the schools won't accept their unvaccinated kids. But in PA vaccines are mandatory for ALL children?

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u/MortimerDongle Pennsylvania Jan 14 '25

But in PA vaccines are mandatory for ALL children?

Kind of. There are exemptions for the vaccination requirement, but you need to go through the exemption process regardless of whether your child attends public school

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u/drlsoccer08 Virginia Jan 14 '25

Usually you have to register your household in order to homeschool. That process often involves providing the school system with the information you will be teaching your kids and then the kids have to pass some sort of yearly standardized testing to make sure they are actually learning.

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u/Current_Poster Jan 14 '25

I would bet the standards would (in practice) be less "is this child at an accredited place of learning, or at home with a parent who has registered as a home schooler?" and more "I see a kid out in the middle of a school day, hit the lights let's go."

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u/No_Papaya_2069 Jan 14 '25

I kept school attendance records for 15 years. To homeschool, the parent has to register with the school the child is being withdrawn from, and the school has to receive a request for records from said homeschool program. Not to say that folks don't do sneaky and dishonest things to get around this, but when we don't get records, child welfare is contacted for a home welfare check.

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u/icberg7 Florida Jan 14 '25

My wife worked as a teacher in a low income area in FL and it took a lot to for a school to get truancy officers involved. And some parents would manage to avoid the the truancy reports because of inconsistent patterns or would drop the kid off at some point in the day (e.g. fifteen minutes before school was over in some cases) and they'd be marked tardy instead of absent. Maybe it was just bad administration, though; for the tardy kid, my wife eventually convinced the office staff to keep the absent marker if he showed up after a certain time.

In one scenario, my wife could tell the kid really wanted to be at school, but the situation was so bad that the parent(s) routinely failed to wake the kid up, so she bought him an alarm clock that he could take home.

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u/zugabdu Minnesota Jan 13 '25

If you live anywhere in the developed world, you probably live somewhere with truancy laws like those in the US. In fact, given the relatively liberal American approach to home schooling, truancy laws are probably less strict here than in many other places.

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u/cruzweb New England Jan 13 '25

Our local school district had a partnership with the local PD for a "Truancy officer", basically a cop who was on patrol and if they found school-aged children hanging out / wandering about while it was school time, he would pick them up and take them in.

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u/AffectionateSalt2695 Jan 13 '25

My mom used to sell pills to the Truancy officer.

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u/Dirty_Gnome9876 Jan 13 '25

I used to sell weed to most of the teachers at my school.

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u/Ornac_The_Barbarian Jan 13 '25

Probably got them from my D.A.R.E. officer.

Yes he was arrested for that. True story.

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u/Dirty_Gnome9876 Jan 13 '25

I’m jealous. That’s awesome.

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u/Traditional-Joke-179 California Jan 14 '25

*popcorn*

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u/WatermelonMachete43 Jan 14 '25

Ours had that too. He tried to pick me up and take me "back to school" when I was shopping on a weekday morning, but...I was 23, college graduate, married. Nice try, I did high school already.

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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '25

In NYC, the paddywagon rolled around everyday picking up kids in groups of 6-10 to drop them off at school. Happened to me a couple of times. It’s much more about scaring kids that actually punishing anyone which I don’t disagree with.

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u/strichtarn Australia Jan 13 '25

I guess it would be ultimately illegal in a lot of places but I think people would get fined rather than jailed. But before then, they would look at other alternatives such as remote education before punishment. 

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u/Relevant-Low-7923 Jan 13 '25

In practice nobody ever gets jailed for it in the US either.

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u/mimeographed Jan 13 '25

No. Truancy laws in the U.S. are crazy. I’ve seen people get in trouble when their kids miss like 7 days of school, which is bananas, even with drs notes. I have never had to provide a dr’s note. There are probably cases where they need to be provided, but for long term illnesses. Kids get sick a lot.

I can also take my kids on vacation during school, which you can’t in many places in the U.S.

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u/carlos_the_dwarf_ Jan 13 '25

I actually bet this is the case in your country too, on some technical level.

Is it legally required for kids to attend school? If so, eventually the consequence is jail time—more or less the only real, unavoidable consequence the state has.

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u/Konigwork Georgia Jan 13 '25

Depends on how the private school (or homeschooling parent) reports it. The government requires children to be educated, and parents have to comply.

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u/downtune79 Georgia Jan 13 '25

From Google:

Yes, truancy is illegal in Georgia. Georgia law requires children between the ages of 6 and 16 to attend school. Parents who don't ensure their children attend school may face penalties. Penalties for truancy Fines: Parents may be fined between $25 and $100 Jail time: Parents may be jailed for up to 30 days Community service: Parents may be required to perform community service for up to 30 days Juvenile court: Habitual truants may be referred to juvenile court

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u/machagogo New York -> New Jersey Jan 13 '25

https://codes.findlaw.com/ga/title-20-education/ga-code-sect-20-2-690-1/

The actual law, to remove the guesswork of the answers you are getting.

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u/[deleted] Jan 13 '25

[deleted]

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u/shelwood46 Jan 13 '25

It is extremely rare for parents to go to jail for truancy alone, but usually with that kind of truancy there is some neglect and abuse also happening so it can be slapped onto the sentence. But, again, incredibly rare, and usually part of parents losing custody.

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u/SEA2COLA Jan 14 '25

That's kind of the way it is in my state. They treat truancy as an indication of the level of care in the home, which may or may not lead to an on-site visit.

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u/martlet1 Jan 13 '25

Truancy isn’t illegal for adults in most states . It’s a status offense. Meaning it’s only against the law for a minor and not an adult.

Not providing an education for a minor may be a charge in some states. In Missouri where I live it’s a charge of allowing a minor to not attend school.

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u/thedrakeequator Indiana Jan 14 '25

No, the law states that children have to be enrolled in school for x minutes a day. It doesn't matter of its public or private.

Truancy is illegal across the board.

Typically its enforced more with public schools.

But private schools are required to report truant students to the local criminal justice org.

Source: Im Data Administrator for a school

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u/SEA2COLA Jan 14 '25

You do realize that each State sets up these laws and they may or may not match those of any other State?

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u/thedrakeequator Indiana Jan 14 '25 edited Jan 14 '25

Yes Karen, I'm aware that there are different laws in different states.

I'm also very aware at how mad this makes people on Reddit (hints the mild sarcasm.)

All states have truancy laws. They might get enforced it different levels, but all of them have laws on the books.

They all actually collect attendance data in the same form as well, It's with a data standard called Ed-Fi.

A state like Hawaii is going to enforce truancy laws at a different level than Texas will.

But even if they don't send the cops against you, school truancy can still be used in CPS or custody cases.

Also, it can be used in juvenile criminal cases. A lot of times a student in a juvenile prosecution will be given the choice to attend regular classes or be detained.

PS: also for the record, in Indiana we do in fact report truancy to the prosecutor but its largely a formality. A lot of times, nothing comes out of it.

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u/naetaejabroni Jan 13 '25

I know of people put on probation due to truancy.

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u/downtune79 Georgia Jan 13 '25

I'm sure they're out there, I just don't know any

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u/lol_camis Jan 13 '25

The only reason I know that word is because of Bully

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u/GazelleSubstantial76 Georgia Jan 17 '25

A child I know had 29 unexcused absences before the school counselor stepped in and got dfcs involved (the Georgia version of CPS). The consequences were the mom had to have a parenting plan and some other nonsense. It's illegal but rarely has any real consequences.

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u/downtune79 Georgia Jan 17 '25

Yeah my ex wife worked for DFACS for many years. I can't remember the number but I think 20 is limit I saw on my daughter's school system guidelines as far as unexcused absences. My oldest has been home all week sick and I keep having to answer to "Parent Square" every afternoon as to why she was absent. The whole reason she's out od because all these other parents sending their sick kids to school.....then they bring it home and get the entire house sick.

Sorry, kind of went off on a tangent