By Harriette Halepis
Source acquired via The Eagle (Bryan, TX) Jan 20, 2010 — Since the first school was erected in Ancient Greece, kids have made it a point to skip class now and then. While most administrators give students a slap on the wrist for this type of truancy, Justice of the Peace Tommy Munoz has had enough of doling out small slaps.
GPS & Truancy
A recent announcement that Munoz would be equipping truant students with GPS trackers has had some parents outraged while others fully support the decree. As some parents have argued, the thought of monitoring students with GPS trackers tends to conjure up images of criminals.
Those opposed to Munoz’s ruling argue that since many criminals around the world have recently been given new GPS ankle bracelets to wear, putting truant students in the same category seems to be sending the wrong signal. Acknowledging these protests, Munoz made it very clear that the GPS trackers truant students would be given are not the same as those trackers that criminals currently wear.
Instead, the “truancy trackers” are approximately the size of an average cell phone. Further, instead of attaching these trackers to a student, students will be asked to carry the trackers with them. In addition to simply carrying a tracker, students will also be asked to check in with authorities five times per day.
What happens if a student forgets to check in or simply forgets a tracker at home? Well, Munoz isn’t playing around when it comes to truancy, and he’ll “…hold them in contempt and they’ll face juvenile detention.” Munoz believes that “…the school has rules and adults have laws,” which means that those teens carrying a truancy tracker better not forget to bring that tracker to school every day.
Teens that are forced to take part in Munoz’s experiment can’t simply drop out of school either - to do so would be in violation of a court order. In fact, Munoz has promised that he will make it his duty to find students who have dropped out and slap them with an arrest warrant.
As for the cost of the program, the funding for the program will come from the Justice of the Peace Technology Fund, and the price of putting together Munoz’s plan will be around $13,000. The aim of the program is to “…get one student out of 10 to graduate…” This may not seem like a lot, but in the town of Bryan, Texas, most students never see graduation day. Whether or not Munoz’s truancy tracker plan will work has yet to be seen, but it’s one way to stop students from skipping school for the time being.
