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Hiding in Plain Sight: Some Students Say Cutting Class is Easy, Especially If They Don't Try to Leave Campus

Posted on: Sunday, 18 June 2006, 06:00 CDT

By Terry Webster and Eva-Marie Ayala, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Jun. 18--Months before Coleen WhiteLightning dropped out of Richland High School, she roamed the hallways, ducked into the in-school suspension room when she wasn't supposed to be there, and sat through as many as three lunch periods a day.

"I'd just walk around talking to people," she said.

High school dropouts across Tarrant County say it's not unusual to skip classes and remain on campus. They talk of spending days in limbo, meandering through the hallways, chatting with friends, sitting through multiple lunches or even joining large gym classes after attendance has been taken. Some said they hid inside empty auditoriums and went to weight rooms to work out rather than to class.

Some students who skip classes end up in General Educational Development, or GED, courses. But new state rules give schools a disincentive for putting teenagers in those programs. Starting with the Class of 2006, those students are being counted as dropouts.

Keeping up with students who cut classes is a constant battle, said Jimmy Jones, who's retiring as principal of Arlington's Lamar High School after spending 24 years as an administrator.

Students usually skip in small groups of three or four students at a time, Jones said. They take turns being lookouts, he said.

"Some teachers will catch them and send them to class, and then they take off and hide in another bathroom," Jones said. "Or, they even jump in on another teacher's class like art or athletics, who might have already taken roll and are busy with their instruction, that they don't even realize that a kid is in their class when they're not supposed to be."

If students were as creative in their schoolwork as they are when it comes to cutting classes, "they'd be doing OK," Jones said.

A camera system helps find wayward students, but with some 65 doors leading outside, keeping them indoors is not always easy, Jones said.

"We don't have as much of a problem with kids skipping in school as we do kids just leaving campus ... but we spend a huge amount of time dealing with this," he said.

It shouldn't be happening at all, said State Board of Education member Joe Bernal.

"If a student goes to school but is not showing up in the classroom, that's preventable," Bernal said. "The student is not only ridiculing the administration, they're actually cheating and letting you know. If students are playing hooky in school, I can't imagine how a system would allow that to happen. That has to do with accountability."

Getting away with it

Students often have intricate plans for skipping classes.

"It isn't that hard to do," said Annette Rosas, 18, who said she skipped classes at Southwest High School in Fort Worth.

Rosas and her friends had the entire school's schedule figured out. They knew when administrators would be walking through the halls, and they knew which class periods the attendance officers would check -- first and last.

Everything in between was fair game for skipping.

Teachers made Rosas sign a book to prove she was in class, but she often had friends sign for her.

"When I did go to class, I'd find a way to get out," she said.

Rosas would say she left something in the library, then leave and never go back to class. Other times, she would go to the girls' bathroom.

Rosas also took refuge in a teacher's room, where she would help with paperwork.

"Sometimes, he'd make me do work," Rosas said. "He'd say, 'You won't do any work when you're in class; maybe you'll do it now.' "

After dropping out of high school, Rosas attended Success High School, an alternative program in Fort Worth. She quit going to those classes, too.

Now she's in a Fort Worth GED program.

"I'm going to fix this," she said.

J'Quon Green skipped classes by drifting through the hallways or going to workout rooms to lift weights at Lamar.

"One of the best places to cut classes was near the auditorium, where there is two ways out if a teacher or administrator is coming," he said. "If you leave campus, they see you on camera leaving the school. There'd be about 15 people skipping at once, walking around in groups of two or three. Some teachers just keep walking past and pretended not to see us. Some would ask for a pass, and we'd take off running."

Like other dropouts, Green still has big plans. He dreams of a star-studded career in the music industry. The 18-year-old has it all planned. He'll get his GED, study video production, make music videos and then start his own record label.

"I use a computer program to make beats for instrumental songs," said Green, who also writes rap lyrics.

Green is working toward his GED, and he plans to attend Tarrant County College and study film and video production.

Some students said adults in their school knew they were skipping and ignored them.

Vanessa Villa, 17, cut classes at Arlington High School throughout the day before eventually dropping out.

She said she never left the campus.

"Teachers wouldn't care," Rosas said. "They just minded their own business and did not say nothing. They'd see me in the same spot with my friends in the student lounge or outside."

Tiffany Lundgren, 17, a former Richland High School student who earned her GED, said she managed to avoid truancy tickets even though she only went to one of her math classes for a semester.

"I'd go to three different lunch periods," she said. "I had three-hour lunches."

Why they do it

Usually, a combination of things causes students to drop out.

Some of the risk factors include poor grades, being older than other students in their classes, and teenage pregnancy, according to the National Center on Secondary Education and Transition in Minneapolis.

Poor attendance is a strong indicator that a student is at risk, according to the center.

And, dropout rates are higher among minorities and students from low-income backgrounds.

In middle school, WhiteLightning struggled with math, and her academics faltered even further in high school.

She recalled being stunned when she saw her freshman schedule, a list that included Algebra I, biology, and introduction to physics and chemistry.

"They expected college-level work, and if you can't keep up, they put you in a remedial class," she said. "I wasn't up to it, so I just gave up."

WhiteLightning started skipping school.

Before she turned 18, WhiteLightning had amassed $1,000 in truancy fines for cutting classes and had a baby.

Sherrie Bice, who began skipping classes as a sophomore, teetered on the brink of homelessness and was also a teen mother.

A bout of tonsillitis forced her to miss two months of classes at Lake Gibson High School in Lakeland, Fla. She fell behind, and then fell in step with a group of kids, "gothic types" she called them.

Bored and frustrated, Bice would spend class time in the girls' bathroom. She recalled latching the door, turning down the toilet seat lid and sitting there for hours.

"I'd write notes to myself and reapply my makeup," Bice said.

A friend even gave her a makeover once, cutting her hair into wispy layers.

Bice thought she would move on to 11th grade, but at the end of the school year, she learned she was being held back. A couple of weeks later, her mom withdrew her from school, and she officially became a dropout.

Bice worked as a hostess at a Denny's restaurant. When her mother moved in with a man, she stayed with her brother. But the day after Bice learned she was pregnant, her brother, Russell, then 18, left to join the military.

Eventually, Bice and her baby ended up in North Texas where her father lives. But her life didn't stabilize until she met Jim and Teresa Miller at the Fountain of Life Church. The North Richland Hills family has given her a stable home.

Both Bice and WhiteLightning gave their babies up for adoption, and each earned GED certificates through a program in the Birdville school district.

In May, Bice sent her daughter's parents an invitation to her GED recognition ceremony.

"I didn't expect them to come," Bice said. "I just want them to save the invitation for her. I'm hoping that some day they'll tell her, 'This is what your mom did for you.' "

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Terry Webster, 817-685-3819 twebster@star-telegram.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas)

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