Two sides of the same coin:  Peoria Unified District is ending their School Resource Officer(SRO) program when State and Federal grant monies cease.  SRO's typically enforce truancy laws, investigate child abuse crimes, and other crimes in and around campuses, according to the Phoenix Police Department, and can cost $100K for each officer, including salary, uniform and car expenses.

     The Deer Valley Unified district claims to utilize SRO's, but the label doesn't really stick.  Hired officers are actually nothing more than over-paid hall monitors(no knock on these fine officers), who are working on their off days, with their own vehicles and equipment, and typically do not enforce truancy or investigate child-abuse or other crimes, unless it occurs while they are on duty.  They are not paid through grants, but rather from district maintenance and operations budgets, hence a much lesser expenditure.

     Deer Valley truancy is sometimes delegated to the Maricopa County CUTS program, and while the County program is successful elsewhere, it is poorly and seldom utilized in Deer Valley.  Child abuse is typically delegated to Child Protective Services, and other crimes are typically left for parents to contact the police, with schools sometimes providing necessary support, sometimes not.

     According to the Az Department of Education, six Deer Valley schools recently failed to achieve federal Annual Yearly Progress(AYP), for various reasons - all directly related to attendance policy enforcement(or lack there of!)  All government/private studies have demonstrated a direct correlation between student achievement and attendance.  Lack of attendance also adversely affects the amount of State monies received by each district, although present accounting procedures now make it less detrimental.  However, when any district does not enforce attendance during the school-year and then encourages test-day attendance, for the sake of achieving acceptable testing numbers in April/May, no one is well served. 

     Regardless of the actions/methods utilized by any district, I am more amazed that parents are accepting of - and seemingly at a loss to control - the attendance practices of their children!   A society's strength is derived from the education of its citizenry(I think some one famous said that, but if not, then I did!)

     My point?  You get what you pay for - do the math!