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conditions that we find existant relating to delinquency and truancy.

The topic to-night is the co-operation between this Bureau and your body, the individuals of your body and the individuals of our Bureau. When I say that the men and women, the field workers in our Bureau are more than desirous of co-operating with the men and women in this staff, I am only stating a truism.

One of the blanks that we have that is intended primarily to save time on all sides is a blank for the principal of the school to fill out giving certain information and signing it. We find it is wise to have written statements regarding persons and things. This particular blank is intended to save time both of the officer seeking information and the principal of the school.

The use of this blank is illustrated as follows: It is the day on which the payrolls are being made ready, the 15th of the month. They cannot be made ready before that date for the simple reason that all absences up to that date must be put on. The folks are very busy when a request comes from the attendance officer or the probation officer to see the principal. To ask to see the principal on a day like that is almost as much as the district superintendent dares to do, and he is the immediate superior. Time is very valuable that particular day. This may be multiplied in other directions for other reasons. Suffice it to say that the principal who is spending his or her time in the class room where they belong cannot be found in a school of seventy or seventy-five classes sometimes within forty or forty-five minutes. If an officer has to wait for the information all that time, his time is certainly wasted. So this very simple card was devised and we find it saves a great deal of time. It is a simple request to give certain facts for the information of the court; date the boy was paroled; when he was returned to school; the number days present, absent, and effort at conduct, and underneath, two lines for any statement the principal may choose to make. This is very important at times. We find it invaluable, provided the principal is interested sufficiently in the work to know that a statement he or she may make will carry conviction to the court, because it is premised when a principal writes that statement that it is a true statement of fact. Here our lines converge and here it is that our efforts to reduce the work in

the school for the benefit of those on the outside who need this information so much may be helpful.

Sometimes you will come across a case such as this. The case is referred to you by the court and you find there have been several weeks, maybe months, of truancy. Such a case came up within the last week. The boy had been absent sixty days and twentyseven half days, and the court requested that I commit the boy. That was more than I cared to do. The boy had never been reported to us as being absent from school. The plea was that the absence was intermittent; that is, two or three or four days absent, two or three or four days present, and all this time this boy was doing work. Our Department has no authority to commit a boy unless he has been charged with truancy by the people with whom we are associated, like the principal of a school, and until we have investigated the case it is impossible for me to sign the commitment. I cite this as an instance of what may happen. I trust in the future that there will be less of this. The Board of Education passed a by-law yesterday that it is well for you to know of, which I shall take the pleasure of reading.

"The principal of every school when a pupil is absent, except for such known cause as severe storm, personal illness, quarantine for them in the family, or religious observance, shall notify the parents or guardians of said pupil by mail or otherwise on the date such absence occurs. If the pupil is not promptly returned to school by his parents or guardians, or if a satisfactory explanation is not made, said principal, if possible, shall interview the parents or guardians either in person or through a teacher. On the third day of absence if a satisfactory explanation has not been made said principal shall forthwith report the case to the Bureau of Attendance, or where truancy or illegal detention of such children is suspected, immediate notification shall be made to the Bureau of Attendance on the day such absence occurs."

That means that the news of the absence is telephoned to us and the absence is looked after at once. The object of this by-law is to prevent these long absences, which, as you know, are very detrimental to the boy's morals and everything else, and even worse to the girls. Here, then, is another point where we will get closer together as time goes on.

Just at present we are in the Second Attendance District, bounded on the North by 59th street, extends South to 14th, over to Broadway and down to Canal, and West to the North River. The police are co-operating with us. Any boy of school age found on the streets between 9 and 3 is taken up by the policemen to the nearest school and the principal of that school notifies us by telephone and we send an attendance officer to put the boy in the school where he belongs. In some instances we find boys down there who belong in the Bronx and Brooklyn. It has taken a man over half a day to take the boy to the school where he belongs, but he has been back in school before completing his first day of truant playing. I am pleased to say that in that district it is what is technically known as "clean." There are so few boys on the street that it is practically nill, and that leads me to ask if you know of boys who are playing truant who are illegally absent from school if you will take the trouble to write the name and address of the boy and send it to me on a postal card, I will promise you he will be back in short order. There you can help us a great deal.

Co-operation between the men who are assigned to the courts from our Bureau and the probation officers can best be obtained, in my opinion, by conferences between themselves. The medicine that will cure one man may not cure another any more than the requirements for one boy may fit the requirements of another. In studying the boy you have to know something of his home, of his playmates and his school. Thus far we have had a considerable number of hearings, over 5,500 since last September and we have had a number of consents given by parents to commit boys,- over 600. Of those 600, we have committed but 200 to the truant school. The other 400 boys are on probation in their schools and making good.

The plan of transferring boys to other environment or other classes in the same school has worked well. It sometimes happens that a teacher and boy do not get along very well together. There are times when human nature asserts itself and the boy and the teacher fall out. Sometimes a truant is made that way. The transfer to another class will frequently effect a cure, and we find on the whole that the transfer plan is working out very well. This is due to change in environment, but more often due to the fact

that our attendance officers working as probation officers keep in touch with the boy and are very helpful at times.

When you put yourself in the place of some of these lads and say what can we do to give this boy a show, then you face the problem. We recognize the fact that the State is endeavoring to make a decent citizen out of a boy, and the State is willing to pay. It costs about $170 a year for the maintenance of a boy that I commit to the truant school. This takes no account of the overhead charge at all, nor computes the cost of vocational training which we are trying to give our boys. If 400 boys are kept in school and not locked up the city has saved $68,000.

If the officer assigned by me to court duty is put in touch with cases that your are interested in and assigned you by the court, valuable time can be saved. It sometimes happens that children are either kept by the court as witnesses or otherwise and notice is not sent to the principal of the school. In the ordinary course of events we get the notification of the principal that such a pupil is absent. If my man in the court knows the pupil is absent, we relieve that tension by notifying the principal at once that the child is detained temporarily and there are not any hard feelings resultant. Otherwise, the machinery of the law is put into operation and sometimes takes more time than it should to find out that the child has been detained by order of the court.

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The problem of truancy is a serious one. Father Lynch, whom I have the honor of knowing very well, in discussing this with me said, The matter is so important from my point of view that I wish I could bring it home to everyone, that the truant is a possible criminal, and nearly all, if not all the men, whom I have come in contact with were truants in their youth." I have heard a judge state (and he is on the bench to-day and at one time heard cases of this kind), that there was a great deal of nonsense about this truancy business. He said, he used to play hookey when he was a kid and he often stole apples and things of that kind; that, therefore when children were brought before him for that particular form of delinquency, thieving and truancy, he always had a fellow feeling in his heart for them and was never willing to punish them. Had that judge been born and brought up in New York City and had known what it means for the boy to be secured by a

bigger gang and terrorized and made to be bad, he might have had an entirely different viewpoint.

My experience as a district superintendent in the lower East Side of New York showed me that the height of unwisdom was to allow a boy out on the streets for two or three or four days, and yet in those days and up to last night at half-past five, it was permissible for a boy to be out six days before his case of absence was reported to the proper authorities, and much may happen in a week in New York City.

Here again is where we get in touch with each other. Coming back to the proposition that I put forth that in the performance of your duty in connection with school children if you will but allow the man that has been assigned to the court to know the facts in the case with which you are connected, I for one shall appreciate it and he certainly will, because it will enable us to co-operate as closely with you as we can.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

MR. JOSEPH S. MEDLER, PROBATION OFFICER, CHILDREN'S COURT, BROOKLYN: I wish to speak of one matter that Mr. Davis referred to, and that is the co-operation of the police with the attendance officers during school hours between 9 and 3. That, I think, will give the Police Department of Brooklyn a whole lot of trouble because there is so much half time in Brooklyn and you will find on the streets of Brooklyn most every day in the afternoon quite a number of school boys and when you stop them and say, "Why are you not in school," they will say, "We go to school in the morning," and they are through at that time.

DR. DAVIS: They all would have cards which would serve as permits.

MR. MEDLER: We all know that truancy is due to parental neglect and bad environment. Now truancy usually begins when the child is quite young and it begins, as far as I can find through my experience, with boys becoming sick and having indulgent mothers. They play off sick for a day and get away with it and then the sickness increases and finally there are other excuses

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