2000 - Truancy
History and notes of
House Bill 3149 and Senate Bill 2425
100th Tennessee General Assembly
1999-2000

by Kay Brooks of TnHomeEd

To set the scene: Memphis had (and still does at this date) a horrendous truancy problem. By the testimony of their School Board Member Sandrich in the House Education Committee on 2/29/00, in the previous 20-25 days there were 4,000 students that had at least 5 days of unexcused absences. Memphis was working on the problem by utilizing federal funds to build a new truancy center. Additionally, they were aggressively picking up students. One of those students happened to be a homeschooler. A lawsuit was eventually filed and the city paid the parents of that homeschooler $8,000 for their mistake. (Check the Incident Page for more details.) My understanding was that there was a problem with anyone other than school personnel picking up students.

Originally this legislation was intended to be added to 49-6-3001 section D (which states that a homeschooler who has reached 17 years of age is exempt from the compulsory attendance law.) So immediately following that would have come the new legislation defining truant to specifically include students enrolled in church-related schools (as well as those in public and private schools). Well, understandably this got the homeschoolers' attention in a hurry. Many of our children do not follow the public school calendar and many have the freedom to be out riding bicycles in the neighborhood, go to the library, etc.

It didn't take long for an amendment to be filed which essentially pulled the original legislation and amended 49-6-3007 instead and specifically exempted "students enrolled in home or non-public schools in accordance with the provisions of Sections 49-6-3050 or 49-50-801" These statutes are the homeschooling law and the Church-Related School laws respectively.

This was my first legislative battle and I am very thankful that Bobbie Patray of the Tennessee Eagle Forum was spearheading this effort to limit the damage to the civil rights of students across the state. She was always very helpful, patient and I learned a lot with her help.

What follows are highlights from my notes.

In the House several committee members spoke about hearing from constituents, and homeschoolers in particular. They got sidetracked on homeschoolers for a bit. Rep. Towns was especially hostile in asking how many homeschoolers there were, who over sees them and how are they regulated. He seemed exasperated that homeschoolers were essentially on the honor system and not accountable. But all of that paled in comparison to the Constitutional issues of not requiring a warrant, allowing officials impunity, trying to limit it to Memphis only, how officers would know who was or wasn't truant and how many days should be allowed for unexcused absences.

On the Senate side Roscoe Dixon phoned me. While saying he welcomed constituents input he also told me to "call off your dogs" (twice). Apparently, he was getting too much input from concerned parents.

Robin Merritt was the lobbyist fighting hard for this bill and feeding answers to bolster the passage of the bill.

Thankfully, this bill was limited to Memphis and homeschoolers were exempted. However, in February of 2002 legislators are trying to expand this police power to include the entire state. Here's the link to what I call Truancy+. (Addendum: this law was eventually expanded.)