From 9:15am until 12:20pm on May 18th, Summit County Juvenile Court Judge Linda Tucci Teodosio heard eight truancy hearings, and the students appearing before her didn’t have far to go…just down the hallway from their classes, in fact.

For the first time, Juvenile Court held truancy hearings away from its Dan Street facility. The site for the hearings was Akron’s Goodrich Middle School. The school’s library was transformed into a courtroom for one day.

The charge was the same – truancy – but the reasons for missing school were as diverse as the kids themselves: from illness to indifference, allergies to apathy, fear to forgetfulness. The bottom line was the same…these kids missed school a lot and they were before the judge to receive the consequences for their chronic absence. There was even a brother and sister brought before the court in the same hearing.

Parents weren’t void of responsibility, either. Parents accompanied their children to the hearing, charged with Failure to Send and they, too, had to enter a plea before Judge Teodosio. Two parents and their children entered not guilty pleas and have pre-trial hearings set for mid-June.

In the end, Judge Teodosio sentenced all of the children and parents to community service and the parents were fined $150. All of the community service and fines were suspended contingent on the child going to school everyday. Any unexcused absences and the sentences for child and parent would be immediately reinstated.

For most cases, Judge Teodosio will be reviewing the cases in September to assure the children will be going to school when it re-opens. When learning that two of the students scored at the honors level in reading and writing, respectively, on the Proficiency Tests, she asked one to submit a book report and the other to write a fictional story about the experience of appearing at a truancy hearing. Others, she ordered that they submit a list of goals for the upcoming school year and how they plan on achieving those goals.

The Court held similar hearings earlier last year at Lawton Community enter for curfew violators.

“I thought it was important to have the hearings in a school environment,” said Judge Teodosio. “It gets these children in the school, and that’s half the battle. Then we send them back to class right after the hearing. Getting them in school and in class is the true desired outcome in these hearings.”

Judge Teodosio anticipates that more hearings could be held at another school during the next school year.