The Mobile County District Attorney’s Office has announced the decrease in Truancy and Chronic Absentee rates from the 2023-2024 school year.
In September of last year, Mobile County District Attorney Keith Blackwood launched a new crime prevention program, the Helping Families Initiative (HFI) designed to address chronic school truancy. The launch of HFI had the full support of all local school systems Superintendents.
One year later, the numbers show a significant decrease across the county. Mobile County Public School Systems, the largest school system in the state, had a 37 percent decrease in truant students and a 45 percent decrease in chronically absent students. Smaller school systems, Saraland, Satsuma and Chickasaw also showed a positive trend in decreasing truancy within one year of working with HFI. Truancy petitions filed at Strickland Youth Center went down to around 150 after being 600-900 over the previous five years.
“This is a big deal – these students are our future leaders, and they deserve our support,” Blackwood said. “We must all come together as a community to do whatever we can to give them the best possible future.”
HFI partners with our local school systems and community partners to intervene early by reaching students and families before they are referred to the juvenile justice system. Working directly with families to find out the root cause of a student’s absences, HFI connects those families to the many resources that exist in Mobile County. “Together, we get these students back in school,” says Mobile County District Attorney Keith Blackwood.
DA Blackwood believes that chronic absences from school lead to a propensity for increased crime and victimization among juveniles, negatively impacting our entire community. HFI seeks to eliminate existing truancy problems in Mobile County, reduce crime and ensure a better education and future for our children.
For more information on the Helping Families Initiative, please visit www.mobileda.org, or reach out directly to our HFI Case Officers at 251-574-3306.
