Christine Ellenwood hid the first two letters from her Spokane high school last fall, warning her that skipping class was against the law.
She was living with her older brother and didn’t want him to know she had missed so much school that she risked juvenile detention for herself and possible fines for him. But she couldn’t hide from her school.
The day after she received the second letter, the 16-year-old was summoned into a classroom to face her counselor and a roomful of strangers, called together as part of one of the most successful truancy-prevention efforts in the state.
They told her they were there to help, not punish her, but they needed to know why she wasn’t showing up until second or third period most mornings.
She started crying.
[For more of this story, written by John Higgins, go to http://www.seattletimes.com/ed...umphed-over-truancy/]
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