Pasco schools aim to put teeth behind student attendance rules
Tampa Bay Times | Jeffrey S. Solochek | December 17, 2025
Superintendent John Legg wants to send the most egregious cases to circuit court
Some of Pasco County’s most egregious school skippers soon could find themselves in court.
The school district is preparing to issue truancy petitions, possibly this week, to students who have missed weeks of class despite several attempts at intervention.
“Truancy is an option of last resort. We’re going to start using that,” superintendent John Legg said. “They’re registered to us. They’re our responsibility. We want them in school.”
The school district has grappled with poor attendance for the past 15 years. Previous superintendents Heather Fiorentino and Kurt Browning repeatedly stressed the importance of ensuring children attend, regularly invoking the mantra that students cannot learn if they are not present.
Attendance campaigns came and went over time, often with a focus on encouraging parents to do a better job of getting their kids to class and prompting teachers to make school a more engaging place to be.
Individual schools reported making progress. But the positive strides dissipated during and after the COVID-19 pandemic as chronic absenteeism worsened in Pasco, like the state and nation.
State lawmakers deemed the situation critical enough to give districts more direction on how to track attendance and take steps to redirect the children who miss the most. Those included more frequent calls to parents, meetings with school services teams about individual students and when absences exceed 15 days of 90, referrals to outside agencies.
The law also clarified districts’ ability to use truancy petitions in the most extreme cases.
That’s one of the options that Pasco, unlike its neighboring counties, hadn’t used in years. The last time it issued a truancy petition was 2011.
If the court finds a student truant, state law allows the court to enter an order requiring the student to attend school and the family to participate in services such as alternative classes for the student, parenting classes for the family and counseling about overcoming barriers to attendance. No fines or more severe punishments are contemplated.
If student does not comply with the order, the court may refer the student to other agencies for staffing as a child in need of services.
Legg said he doesn’t expect to go that route except in the most difficult cases. He acknowledged that many children have extenuating circumstances that interfere with their attendance, and when dealt with proactively those often fix themselves.
He noted that the district’s attendance figures have improved in the past several months, with 39 schools seeing higher daily rates from a year ago, and 28 schools achieving the target of 95% daily attendance.
But there remain some situations where the students and families ignore the district’s efforts, sometimes over years. Data presented at a school board workshop Tuesday showed that as of Tuesday, 1,209 students had 15 or more unexcused absences since August and, of those, 540 were referred to Youth Family Advocates, an outside counseling agency that Legg said is overwhelmed and understaffed.
Without consequences to enforce, Legg said, there’s little left for the schools to do.
“We don’t want to inundate the court system, but we do need a process to officially address these students,” Legg told the board, stressing that Florida has a compulsory attendance law for children ages 6 to 18.
Students can drop out at age 16 with parental permission.
Legg noted that the district expends a great deal of resources and time documenting the efforts taken to comply with the attendance laws, and attempting to get accountability from the families. If the parents choose to put their children in another education setting, such as private school or homeschool, that’s up to them.
Until that happens, though, the district will take its enforcement role seriously, Legg said.
If the court can take 35 to 50 cases a month, he told the board, it would make a dent in the caseload. And word will get out that the district means business: “Bringing a family before a black robed judge with law enforcement gets children to sit up in their seat … and take this issue seriously.”
School board members expressed strong support for the plan. Vice chairperson Al Hernandez said he would like to see the district be able to better use the time of overworked social workers and others assigned to deal with attendance matters.
“I’m glad we are getting serious,” chairperson Colleen Beaudoin said. “We need to create some urgency to get kids into school.”
The circuit court is working to establish a workable model for Pasco, Chief Judge Shawn Crane said in a prepared statement. Court officials met with representatives from the school district, Department of Juvenile Justice and the clerk’s office on Friday to discuss the situation.
“Recognizing the recent spike in truancy in Pasco schools, we are exploring starting a truancy court in Pasco County,” Crane said. “Presently we are waiting for some requested information from Pasco schools so we can move forward.”
