TALLAHASSEE — For some Florida teens, October is the bewitching month for reasons other than Halloween.
It’s when the state starts yanking their driving privileges for cutting too much school.
A state dropout-prevention law, on the books since 1997, targets students who rack up 15 or more unexcused absences by suspending their driver’s license or permit, or banning them from getting one.
The Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles tracks suspensions by quarters, with an often double-digit jump in the numbers Oct. 1-Dec. 31, starting six weeks into the school year.
Three Tampa Bay counties made the top 10 list for suspensions issued last school year: Pinellas was No. 4 with 406, Hillsborough was No. 8 with 193 and Pasco was No. 10 with 134.
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The rankings are roughly proportionate to the driving-age population — about 2 percent of Pinellas students old enough to drive, for example, ran afoul of the law.
School officials caution that driving privilege suspensions are but one tool to fight truancy, which has many causes that differ from teen to teen, and that it only works when the student has a particular pressure point.
“It’s effective for a portion of our population, the ones who can afford cars,” said Mark Ackett, the Hillsborough school district’s attendance supervisor.
Ackett estimated that the driving-age population was 30,000 to 40,000 students, meaning less than 1 percent received driving restrictions. Pasco schools have about 14,000 driving-age students, so the figure there also is about 1 percent.
The number of suspensions mostly tracks by population: Miami-Dade, which has the biggest public-school district in Florida, was No. 1 for 2013-14 with 671. Seven smaller counties — including Indian River — had no suspension orders.
The law, however, applies equally to students in private schools, saying they all must meet “relevant attendance requirements.” It does allow for hardship waivers in rare circumstances, such as for health or family crises.
Collier County was No. 15 with 75 suspensions issued. In St. Lucie County, there were 27 and Martin County had just one for the whole year.
“While the numbers include suspensions for those who drop out of school, they predominantly reflect those students who had their driver licenses suspended” because of poor attendance, said John Lucas, spokesman for the state Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
Pinellas County has had a reputation for absenteeism, with a handful of students missing more than 40 days of school by February of the 2012-13 school year, according to reports.
Two years before that, Pinellas had the worst attendance among Florida school districts of more than 100,000 students.
Records for 2010-11 show 13 percent of students were classified as “chronic absentees,” meaning they missed 21 days or more of school.
Driving-privilege suspensions aren’t a magic cure, Pinellas school board member Rene Flowers said.
“I have to agree that if a child does not have a car or access to a car, it’s not a deterrent,” she said.
“For those kids, we just need to get to the heart of why they’re not coming to school,” Flowers added. “Are they only missing morning classes? Maybe it’s because they’re oversleeping because they also work at night.
“Or maybe they skip school because they’re being bullied, or because they can’t grasp the material and aren’t getting help,” she said. “So we need to bridge that gap.”
David Chamberlin, a student services supervisor for Pasco County public schools, points to one benefit of the law:
The state can compel teens to attend school only to the age of 16 so the threat of driving suspensions dissuades them from dropping out.
“It’s one mechanism to keep the 17-year-olds in line,” Chamberlin said. “Then they have a real investment in coming to class. It’s definitely a strong motivator for those kids.”
In Indian River County, which had no suspensions, the school district started an attendance awareness campaign this year, said Lillian Torres-Martinez, the student services director.
Social workers and individual schools help by creating mentoring programs, she added.
“It’s about building these relationships,” Torres-Martinez said. Students “develop a sense of belonging in school.”
Research also shows truancy has different causes for students of different socioeconomic levels. That’s another reason why administrators and policymakers continually have to brainstorm for better tools.
The threat of having a driver’s license suspended may not mean as much in St. Lucie County, according to Stacey Cason, student services program specialist.
Economic status plays a part in whether a teen even applies for a license, she said.
In St. Lucie, 16.6 percent of residents live below the poverty line, census figures show; that’s 1 percent over the state average of 15.6 percent. Cason said she doesn’t see as many students applying for licenses as elsewhere. Schools there do encourage students to attend school regularly because “they can’t learn if they’re not there,” Cason said. Many schools have attendance committees that look at what can be done to make a child want to be at school.
