Mother and daughter holding truancy court sheet. The student
must get it signed daily by her teachers, to ensure her attendance.

On June 22, 2015 Tony Gonzalez an established and credible editorialist for the Dallas Morning News, wrote an article entitled "No more criminal prosecution of school truants in Texas". In this article, Gonzalez discussed Gregg Abbotts new bill that got rid of charging school truants with a class C misdemeanor. In this article aimed at students and their families, he claims that getting rid of that previous bill is exactly what needed to be done. With charging these students with a
riminal misdemeanor, it costs an enormous amount of time and money for not only that student, but their parents as well. This bill could have also caused enormous self esteem problems, as when students were charged with truancy they were escorted off the school grounds in handcuffs for all of their classmates to see.  He provided a statistic that at least 1,283 students have spent time in jail during the previous law's existence. And while their children are battling these cases, the parents have to take time off of work, and miss wages that are so desperately needed to support their family.
I completely agree with Gonzalez's claim, I believe that children should spend as much time as possible in the classroom learning, and not in jail getting punished. We do need to crack down on school attendance, but in a way that ends up helping the students rather than punishing them. If we prosecute these children, they are just going to resent their education even more than they already do. Our education system should be a place where everyone feels safe and where students want to actively engage in what is taking place.