Gov. Gavin Newsom and I don’t have much in common politically. He’s the Democratic governor of California; I work for a think tank in Utah that supports limited government. Newsom opposes school choice and issued a moratorium on some new charter schools in California. I’m a former public school principal who has become a school choice advocate, and I support alternatives like charter schools.
On one thing, Newsom and I agree — criminalizing chronically absent students and their families is a bad idea.
The attendance crisis in schools is real. Nearly one in four students nationwide is chronically absent. Absences put pressure on students, who fall behind, and on teachers, who are left to fill the gaps.
Some lawmakers believe that solving chronic absenteeism, also known as truancy, can be achieved through courtrooms and criminal codes. They say that if parents are threatened with fines or jail, students will start showing up.
It sounds harsh. It’s also wrong. Punitive truancy laws don’t address the real reasons kids miss school. Instead, these laws turn frustration with a complex problem into a blunt legal hammer.
As a public school principal, I was always concerned about chronic absenteeism. I spent many hours with parents and students trying to understand why school wasn’t working for them.
Some teachers wanted me to turn to the courts. But legal action never fixed the problem. It was simply a way to hand off a problem schools didn’t feel equipped to solve. The sentiment was understandable. The solution was not.
Truancy isn’t a politically partisan issue. Timmy Truett, a Republican representative in Kentucky, and Kamala Harris, the former Democratic vice president, senator and attorney general from California, both pushed for stricter truancy penalties.
In Kentucky, a 2024 law requiring court referrals for truant students led to a surge of families pulling their children out of public schools to homeschool, rather than face legal consequences.
And in California, Harris’ policy of arresting and charging parents with misdemeanors produced equally troubling results. One California mother was arrested after her daughter, who has sickle-cell anemia, missed school due to hospitalizations.
Harris, while running for president, said she regrets criminalizing truancy in California. And Newsom in early October signed a bill ending California’s policy of punishing parents with a fine or a year in jail for their children’s chronic truancy.
Truancy laws all share a fatal flaw: they ignore why students are absent in the first place.
Health struggles, bullying, economic hardship, and weak school connections are often the real barriers. Threatening parents does nothing to resolve them. It only deepens the divide between families and schools.
Beneath the statistics lives an uncomfortable truth that few want to say aloud: Public schools do not work well for every student.
Some face unsafe or hostile environments. Others encounter ideological conflicts or simply feel lost in the system. Families often disengage because their schools aren’t meeting their needs.
There is a better solution. Schools must shift from punishment to prevention. Over the past 15 years, many states have made tremendous strides towards this goal.
Iowa built a data system to catch absentee patterns early. Georgia required attendance teams and school climate committees. These efforts share one trait — they treat absenteeism as a problem to solve with families, not a crime to prosecute against them.
Schools that intervene early see results by building trust and addressing practical obstacles, such as transportation, bullying, health and engagement issues. These strategies rarely make headlines, but they work.
Lawmakers should follow these examples. Address safety and climate concerns directly. Help schools build stronger relationships with families. And expand educational options for those who are not thriving in traditional settings.
Attendance improves when families trust their schools, not when they fear them.
Jon England is the education policy analyst at Libertas Institute, a Utah-based free-market think tank.