December 2

I spent the entire day with Mr. Roch. Since he had been gone for two days he had a lot of stuff to catch up on so I worked on some dossier stuff.  Once he got to the bottom of a stack he told me he had a job for me. 
The district judge, Albert Mitchell had sent him an article about the ACT program in Clovis. The ACT program is Abolish Chronic Truancy.  It is a program that Clovis schools uses to keep kids in school.  It has been going on for three years now and is very successful. Mr. Mitchell wants Mr. Roch to think about doing something like this.  So together Mr. Roch and I decided to have a meeting with some of the agencies in Tucumcari and Quay county to discuss our options about truancy.  I called the DA, Ron Reeves, the judge, juvenile justice, and the sheriff. We agreed on a luncheon meeting scheduled for Tuesday the 8th at noon.  I am looking forward to this.  For the rest of the morning I researched other truancy programs throughout the nation.  I didn't have much luck finding specific programs but I did find some ideas that will be great to share with the committee on Tuesday.
In the afternoon I just really watched Mr. Roch work, he had a few people come in to talk to him.  One was a girl who had just turned 16, she had a three month old baby and was getting married.  She called him to ask about getting her GED.  The state law is that in order to get the GED before you are 18 you must be homeschooled by a parent who has a high school diploma or a GED themselves.  Neither of her parents do. He question was since she is getting married can she be her own legal guardian even though she is not 18.  Mr. Roch called the state department and the solution is this.  She will be place into the homeschool program so she isn't a drop out for us.  He teacher of record will be a professor from Mesa Lands.  This way she gets to get her GED and not be a drop out.  Win win for both of us!!! That was cool to watch.
The next person was Alicia Hatch.  She is one of our trainers at school for quality schools.  At the middle and high school we have goal teams.  She is implementing the same thing at the elementary schools.  She came in with some concerns that the elementary schools were not being very receptive to the idea and that she was getting very frustrated with it.  Their attitude is that it's just one more thing they have to do.  She was looking for suggestions from Mr. Roch and just wanted to give him the heads up.
Overall, even though I didn't do much, it was a great learning day.