Parents who habitually fail to get their elementary or middle-school kids to class could be facing a fine of up to $2,000 or potentially a year in jail, according to retooled California truancy laws that took effect Jan. 1. Measures to prevent chronic absenteeism already exist through the San Diego Unified School District’s School Attendance Review Board (SARB). Rules are set up to keep families out of the court system and students in class, said Crystal Cavanagh, manager of the SARB’s attendance office. “The focus is on the younger kids because that’s when we need to get them into the good habits to get them successful in graduating,” Cavanagh said. The most serious of penalties for parents is jail time, and typically occurs only after teachers and counselors have exhausted all means to address the problem with moms and dads, Cavanagh said. First, counselors send home a series of letters notifying parents of unexcused absences. After schools fail to fix the problem with a parent or parents, a letter of referral spins the case ahead to the attendance review board. Along with each attempt at intervention comes counseling appointments and other measures like social services to keep the child in school, according to educators. School police are also used to locate students, according to Anthony Gonzalez, a police officer for the San Diego Unified School District assigned to Point Loma High School. “We [school police] help out the program,” Gonzalez said. “We just try to figure out how we can get the kid on the right track to come back to school.” At least two school counselors agreed that the potentially harsher consequences for parents of young children could help truancy abuses. “If enforced, it will be very helpful in motivating parents to take their parental responsibilities seriously and get their students to school,” said Patricia Hines, head counselor at La Jolla’s Muirlands Middle School. Individual school funding also largely depends on a formula known as average daily attendance (ADA), in which money is directly tied to the number of students in class each day. Continued low attendance throughout the district may lead to deeper budget cuts, according to SDUSD officials. “I would imagine that parents might step up their efforts to get their kids to school [because of the state’s stricter truancy laws], so I imagine it would have a positive effect on student attendance,” said Fred Laskawski, a counselor at Dana Middle School. Dana Middle School falls far below the average in truancy rates for the San Diego Unified School District, with an estimated 10 percent truancy rate. That is, of the 809 students enrolled in the 2009-10 school year, only 81 were considered truant, as defined by the state of California. SDUSD as a whole has an estimated 18 percent truancy rate, according to the state of California’s Department of Education.