Never underestimate the sheer determination of public school advocates for exercising complete state control over not just their students but the families that raise them:
More parents can expect to be jailed if their children miss school after a court upheld prison terms for two mothers whose young children missed just two weeks over the course of a year.
Mothers Tamarae LaRue and Caitlyn Williams from Lebanon, Missouri, were put behind bars for not ensuring ‘regular' attendance by their six and seven-year-old children.
And their appeal was dismissed on Tuesday by the Missouri Supreme Court which insisted that the state did not have to define what 'regular' means.
The state demands that students have at least a 90% attendance rate during the school year. The parents in their appeal to the Supreme Court had argued that their children hadn't reached that threshold and that the absences had been "excused" under the state statute anyway, and furthermore that the state standard of "regular" attendance is too vague, and the 90% number an arbitrary threshold that's not actually in thee statute itself.
The state supreme court countered that several of the absences had in fact been unexcused.
(Oof — remember this language? "Excused" and "unexcused?" I'm having flashbacks.)
The 90% figure was irrelevant, the court claimed; rather the issue was overall attendance. The parents were given "notices" about the state law, the court ruled, and furthermore "each parent was in control of their young child," leading the court to conclude that the mothers "knowingly failed to cause their child to attend school on a regular basis."
Yeah I'm sorry but that sounds bogus and has all the appearance of a looming Supreme Court battle to me.
The mothers in question, thankfully, are not currently imprisoned, one having already served her seven-day sentence and another having been given probation.
But you can only assume things are going to get worse in Missouri well before they get any better.
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