Governor's Help Needed on Truancy Issue

John R. Butcher, a retired Virginia Senior Assistant Attorney General, wants Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell to object to the State Board of Education's recent approval of what he describes an "unlawful and perverse" truancy regulation that continues to allow what he terms the "wholesale and destructive lawbreaking by Richmond Public Schools."

In a letter to Gov. McDonnell released today, Butcher asserts that the truancy regulation approved September 27, 2012 by the State Board of Education is unlawful since it ignores part-day absences from school:  "The Board now has created a regulation that would permit their abuse to continue for any student alert enough to attend school long enough to be marked “present” (or, even, “tardy”)." 

To show what is wrong with the regulation as it was approved, Butcher cites both the Virginia Code and proffers the example of the January 2004 killing of Justin Creech, a student at Richmond Public Schools'  Thomas Jefferson High School by another TJ student, Phillip Hicks.  Both boys were truant at the time Hicks stabbed Creech in the heart and left him to die in the parking lot between the crazy Greek Restaurant and the Allen & Allen Law Firm at the corner of W. Broad St. and Staples Mill Road. 

Under the recently approved change, the regulation reaches only full-day absences.  Thus they propose to ignore their duty to enforce the statute that requires school attendance "during the period of each year the public schools are in session and for the same number of days and hours per day as the public schools."  

"Indeed, a student could march into school only during the last five minutes of class on each school day and never be classified as truant under the amended regulation.  Surely the General Assembly did not intend that absurd result," notes Butcher. "The sole rationale proffered by staff for this unlawful exception is convenience.  Yet the statute does not make an exception for the convenience of the school divisions or of the courts." 

Not only is The City of Richmond Public School (RPS) system blatantly violating Virginia law concerning the enforcement of attendance and truancy regulations, but VDOE is letting them get away with it, according to Butcher who has posted considerable documentation, correspondence and legal analysis to prove his point on his website, the Cranky Taxpayer.  

Bottom-line, Butcher wants McDonnell to use "The Administrative Process Act" to formally object to a regulation or, in conjunction with one of three legislative committees, to suspend the effective date. 

"I think the Governor should do both and, in the meantime, have a heart-to-heart talk with the Board about whether they are going to do this right so he won't have to fire them."

Three separate requests for comment from Richmond Public Schools and VDOE were  not responded to by 6pm.

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Click here to see charts, data and citations from The Virginia Code detailing Richmond's Violations of State Law