Article from Reason by J.D. Tuccille.

Why should you faithfully deliver your children to the government schools, missing no more than a bare handful of days? Because those tykes are worth big bucks to institutional educators, so if you don’t hand ’em over, you might be slapped with fines or jail time.

That’s an accurate interpretation of a letter sent out to parents for years by Orange County, California, District Attorney Tony Rauckauckas. But don’t take my word for it—read it for yourself. And keep in mind that this represents a national problem of schools claiming greater authority over kids then their parents, whether because they think they know better or just because the kids are so valuable.

One of the main components of the Orange County Gang Reduction and Intervention Partnership (OC-GRIP) “focuses on student school attendance,” states Rauckauckas’ letter.

As the California Legislative Analyst’s Office points out, “the department uses attendance data to allocate state funding for various programs,” and accordingly requires school districts to report attendance three times per year. If enough warm bodies are on hand, the schools get a full take of the money. If not… Well, an “increase in the number of students who were chronically absent cost the district $45 million in state revenue that year,” The74, an education news site, reported of the LA Unified School District in 2017. “During the 2009-2010 term, traditional public schools in San Diego County lost out on at least $102 million in state funding because of absences,” KPBS noted in 2011.

Read the entire article at Reason.

Image Credit: By St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons