Truancy Officer

About the role

The Truancy Officer ensures students are attending school regularly by investigating causes of unexcused or excessive absences, communicating with families, and assisting them in problem-solving, issuing attendance-based warnings, and helping to represent the school if cases go to court.

Essential Functions

• Coordinates school-wide attendance efforts and absenteeism prevention programming with a two-fold focus: 1) educating families on the importance of attendance with a focus on prevention and 2) intervening to fix the underlying issues that lead to absenteeism
• Works to monitor student adherence to the school's attendance policies, including student information systems, state systems, and company systems daily
• For lower-level truancy concerns: emails, calls and sends auto-dial notices to target student population
• For escalated truancy concerns, holds meetings with student and family to address concerns, identify barriers, and provide back-on-track planning
• For final level truancy concerns, holds meetings with students, family, and support; offers restoration to students, including truancy agreements and courses; covers state law concerns, as the next step will have the student go to court
• Works with county court systems, understanding requirements to process juvenile court petitions
• Collaborates with authorizer to ensure best practices, final level truancy concerns, training, etc.
• Ensures state compliancy guidelines are met for student attendance and progress
• Produces attendance/truancy reports for the school, county and state; must have Excel fluency
• Works with the Student Support Team to assist students in situations where referral to service agencies are necessary
• Works with families and teachers to develop individualized action plans to increase student attendance and engagement
• Works with the Executive Director, manager, etc. to develop improved procedures that address attendance
• Works with families and student support staff to prevent juvenile delinquency
• Develops and implements educational workshops related to absenteeism for school staff and families
• Assists staff on projects regarding student attendance/truancy
• Ensures school policy and state requirements are met regarding all attendance withdrawals

Minimum Qualifications

• Associate degree or specialized related training
• One to two years of truancy experience OR equivalent combination of education and experience
• Ability to pass required background check

Other Required Qualifications

• Knowledge of state school attendance laws, and other pertinent laws regarding K-12 education
• Knowledge of state specific court procedures regarding truancy
• Familiarity with online learning environment
• Strong organizational and time management skills
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc.)
• Ability to travel 20% of the time

Desired Qualifications

• Three (3) years of experience working with families in similar capacity, enrollment or truancy
• Post-secondary degree especially in Education, Counseling, Human Services or related field of study

Work Environment

This is a home-based position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.