EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen's Park.
Standing outside the Sault Ste. Marie courthouse earlier this year, Michelle said it's not where she expected to end up.
Earlier that morning, her teenage daughter, Ashley, pleaded guilty to a charge of truancy for missing months of school.
"I thought they would do different things and not where my child ... ended up having to plead guilty today and be on probation for a year," Michelle said.
Speaking to SooToday after the hearing, Michelle said she had asked the Algoma District School Board for a referral to a re-engagement coach to help with her daughter's school attendance.
"There was a lot of force ... (and) with the mental health part of it ... they just were not taking that into consideration," Michelle said.
The Trillium is using pseudonyms for both Michelle and Ashley due to legal restrictions on publishing the name of a youth charged with an offence.
"When they pushed the truancy charge, it was during the time when we were moving from being homeless for three years ... finally into our home," said Michelle, with both mother and daughter agreeing that their experience with homelessness affected Ashley's ability to attend school.
"There's obviously, like, undiagnosed mental health, which is what made me upset hearing my child plead guilty," she added.
"The mental health is young to old, and ... you don't want to see your child get in trouble, at least I don't," Michelle said. "But hopefully this is what will help, you know, I'm praying that this is what'll help."
"It has to help," Ashley said of the charge. "I like school, I just struggle for some reason."
Students in Ontario are required under the Education Act to attend school until they're 18 or graduate, but they can be legally excused for reasons including sickness or "other unavoidable cause," homeschooling or if the school board doesn't provide transportation and there is no school within a specific distance of a child's home.
The Education Act also says a youth who is supposed to be attending school but "who refuses to attend or who is habitually absent from school is ... guilty of an offence and on conviction" is subject to penalties under the Provincial Offences Act.
According to the Provincial Offences Act, this applies to youth aged 12 to 15, who can also be fined and placed on probation.
A parent or guardian who "neglects or refuses to cause" a child to attend school can also be fined under the Education Act.
While charging teens for being "habitually absent," or what is commonly referred to as truancy, doesn't seem to be prevalent in Ontario, at least one school board -- the Algoma District School Board in northern Ontario -- still uses the practice, an analysis by The Trillium shows.
The Trillium reached out to all 72 school boards in the province to ask whether they pursue charges against students for truancy, could provide data from the last three years on such charges and how they address student absenteeism. Twenty-nine school boards responded, with 22 saying they don't pursue "punitive measures," two declining to comment and two saying a freedom-of-information request would need to be filed.
The provincial government is now facing calls to ban the practice from families of youth who have been charged with truancy and those in the education, legal and child development fields.
'It's very barbaric': parent
Danielle is one of the people calling for change.
"(It) should be abolished, because if the whole province is not on the same page, I don't understand that, that doesn't make sense to me," said Danielle of the ability of school boards to pursue charges against students for missing school. "It's very barbaric. It's not something that should happen."
Her daughter, Laura, was charged with truancy when she was 15.
The Trillium is using pseudonyms for both of them.
While her daughter did miss school, Danielle said it wasn't for a lack of trying.
"I drove her to school -- I would say 90 per cent of that time we were physically at the building, but she could not go inside, and sometimes she'd get in, but we couldn't get in class," said Danielle of her daughter's first few months of high school.
"We tried, and she tried hard to do what she wanted -- to have a normal life," said Danielle. "She really struggled with being there, but they didn't seem to understand that."
She added that her daughter's struggle with physically attending school was due to personal challenges, including severe anxiety and depression.
"I tried really hard to find a good fit for her, knowing her struggles," Danielle said, adding that she was told she "didn't meet criteria" for an "online home program."
Following the truancy charge, her daughter was placed on probation for a year, requiring her to do monthly check-ins with a probation officer.
"She goes in front of a judge, she gets charged with something, and then you finish your last probation meeting, and nothing happens, nothing changes, nothing's done," Danielle said. "What was the point of it?"
"I think it's absolutely horrible that this is allowed to happen ... because you're punishing kids for something they have no control over -- their mental health," Danielle said. "They're young, and they're trying hard, and they punish them for it, and I think it's disgusting, to be honest."
A third parent whose child attends the Algoma District School Board said that "when the school recommended referring my child to the board's re-engagement team, I was encouraged and hopeful that someone with more experience and expertise was going to help us."
"Instead, they threw gas on the fire, and my child went from attending half days to full school refusal when they laid the truancy charge," said the parent.
For its part, the Algoma District School Board (ADSB), which has about 3,800 high school students from communities that sit along the north shore of Lake Huron, including Sault Ste. Marie, said it turns to truancy charges as a "last resort."
Superintendent Joe Maurice highlighted regular attendance as a "key indicator for success," noting that the board uses several "interventions" when attendance becomes a concern.
Most of the time, these concerns are initially addressed by teachers and principals, with help from school and attendance counsellors as needed, Maurice said in a statement.
"Students with persistent absenteeism, despite the efforts of school-based staff, are referred to ADSB's Re-Engagement Team who work with the family and student to address potential barriers to attendance," he said.
This team, established last year to address declining attendance rates after the COVID pandemic, "develops a re-engagement strategy that focuses on caring, connecting, coaching, collaborating and congratulating," he said. "This often involves co-developing a support plan to address mental health and academic needs, regular monitoring and check-ins, and exploring flexible learning pathways."
Maurice pointed to the Education Act, noting provisions "that can lead to court applications," such as the section pertaining to a youth who "refuses or is habitually absent."
"In a few situations, where ADSB's Re-Engagement Team is unable to develop a successful plan to improve attendance, a truancy charge may be utilized as part of the process," Maurice said. "Truancy charges are not a frequent occurrence. Algoma District School Board tries everything possible to reengage a student and a truancy charge is a last resort."
He said there have been "very few truancy charges" in the last three years -- the board did not provide specific data -- and that sometimes the charge is dropped prior to a conviction due to "improved attendance arising from the collaboration between the Re-Engagement Team and family."
'It's devastating for a family'
Monika Ferenczy, senior consultant and owner of Ottawa-based Horizon Education Consulting, said that in her 30 years in the education sector, "I've never heard this happening."
That is, until last year.
Ferenczy has since worked with the families of three youth from the Algoma District School Board who faced truancy-related charges.
Calling the practice of charging students with truancy "completely malicious," Ferenczy said she'd like Education Minister Paul Calandra to "repeal the truancy sections of the Education Act."
Ferenczy said truancy charges reflect a "reactive approach, rather than a proactive, student-supportive approach."
"So the whole point is that we want kids to attend school, and if they're not attending school, we have to figure out why they're not attending and not just slap truancy charges on them or take a punitive and disciplinary approach to it, because there's always a reason," she said.
Ferenczy said mental health was a factor in all three cases she helped with -- for one, the charges were dismissed when the case went to court.
She pointed to the Ministry of Education's Policy/Program Memorandum 169, which focused on student mental health and went into effect in September 2024.
"Emphasizing the importance of self-care and prioritizing mental health can allow for more open conversations amongst students, parents, and teachers," the policy states, adding that if students cannot attend school due to a mental health concern, "their absence must be excused" under the section of the Education Act that allows for absences due to "sickness or other unavoidable cause."
Ferenczy said she thinks pursuing truancy charges against a student runs counter to this policy, "saying that you have to find a positive intervention and solution for the student, not sending them to court."
Aside from being what she called a "complete waste of the court's resources," being charged with an offence and going through a court process "causes school trauma," she said.
"It's devastating for a family, because the parent feels helpless," she said. "The student feels targeted and helpless and very vulnerable, and that's why I say it's malicious, because the student is already having difficulty and challenges in their education, and then they're being accused of not going to school and being truant."
Dr. Vanessa Lapointe agreed.
"If you already have a youth who has a challenging mental health picture, and then you are going to compress them under this kind of stress and strain, that's playing with fire," said Lapointe, a parenting educator, former psychologist and founder of The North Star Developmental Clinic in Surrey, B.C.
While Lapointe hasn't worked with any youth who've faced truancy charges, she's dealt with many who get in trouble for not showing up to class.
"In my experience, when kids don't go to school, they usually have a really good reason for that," she said, adding this could include wanting to belong and getting in with a peer group that's not going to school or feeling anxious for social reasons or because they have undiagnosed learning challenges and have been "inappropriately penalized."
"School is a really hard place for a lot of kids to be, and so when they don't go to school, the last thing, really, that makes any sense at all is to put the fire under their toes and make them wrong for something that was already wrong and made them not go to school," she said.
"What are we doing? Sending a 12-year-old to court over something that is clearly precipitated by whatever else has gone on in their 12 years on this planet," Lapointe said. "A 12-year-old doesn't create their own environment, a 15-year-old doesn't create their own environment ... that environment is being created by the grown-ups that are around that child."
She said if that environment isn't working for a child, it's up to the grown-ups around them to "step up and step in and make the environment more conducive to growth so that the child gets an opportunity to shine in the way that they were intended to shine."
Mary Birdsell, a lawyer and executive director of Justice for Children and Youth (JFCY), a legal aid clinic, said there was a "sudden reinvigoration" of truancy matters several years ago.
"What we discovered in that context was that almost exclusively, the kids who were getting charged had significant mental health issues," said Birdsell, adding that they routinely got the matters thrown out of court.
Birdsell, who has worked on truancy cases along with her colleagues, said one of the boards charging students for truancy at the time was the Toronto District School Board and that they worked with the board to say, "Is this really how you want to approach this? Is this a meaningful mechanism for encouraging kids to come to school?"
The practice, she said, "kind of died off, I think, as people agreed that maybe there were better ways."
She said she hasn't heard much about the issue of truancy in at least the last six months.
Birdsell said while she thinks there is reason for there to be "state-based attention to whether or not parents or guardians are withholding children from school," older children regularly skipping school "is an issue that should not be dealt with in the courts, but should be dealt with from a support and care point of view."
"I think it's kind of an outdated practice, the idea that you can sort of use a quasi-criminal process to get someone to go to school," she added.
Minister Calandra's office did not respond before publication to questions about the concerns raised or whether the government would consider any changes.
What other boards are saying
The Upper Canada District School Board said the practice of having students or parents charged with truancy isn't common and "is limited" within the board, though it didn't respond to a question about the last time a truancy charge might have been pursued.
"We prioritize building relationships with students and families, understanding student needs and the reasons behind absenteeism," said the board's executive superintendent Shelley Riddell. "We try to work collaboratively with students and families to facilitate a more positive relationship with school and enhance student well-being."
The Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board said it stopped using the practice of having students charged for truancy in 2020, and that it "sees absenteeism and truancy as part of a broad, complex social and academic problem that requires a multisectoral and wrap-around approach."
The board said it has a "three-tiered Attendance Response Program," which includes school-wide initiatives to support attendance, a process for referring students to social workers or attendance counsellors, working with families to "mitigate barriers to attending school and explore strategies to return back to school" and having "strong relationships" with service providers in the community to refer families for further supports.
Both the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board and the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board (HWCDSB) said they don't use this practice, with the Catholic board saying it "never" has.
"The HWCDSB takes a supportive stance versus a punitive one," the board said, adding that strategies it uses include personalized timetables -- such as reduced schedules or full-day co-operative education -- alternative learning, eLearning, alternative education sites and social worker support.
The board said attendance counsellors also review why students don't attend school, "taking into consideration mental health, socio-economic factors, family stressors, etc."
The Keewatin-Patricia District School Board also said it's never pursued truancy-related charges against students or parents, adding its "philosophy is to address absenteeism through a tiered support approach, interventions, engagement, and partnership with families rather than legal penalties, which can have unintended adverse effects on students and families."
Beth Fairfield, superintendent of education at the Rainy River District School Board, echoed this, saying research doesn't support "punitive measures ... as an effective method of addressing chronic absenteeism and can be counterproductive by damaging the relationship between home and school."
The Sudbury Catholic District School Board also said it doesn't believe charging families would address the root causes of absenteeism -- and could in fact "create additional stress and stigma."
"We recognize that many students who struggle with attendance face barriers such as mental health challenges, marginalization, or systemic inequities related to poverty," the board said, adding that its focus is on "early intervention, relationship-building, and wraparound supports."
This, the board said, could include having attendance counsellors work with families, collaborating with youth services, health, police or children's aid agencies, and in-school supports like flexible scheduling, "culturally responsive approaches" and individualized programming.
Jennifer Pellegrini, communications and community engagement officer with the Niagara Catholic District School Board, said student absenteeism can result from various factors "often outside of a student's control."
"Punishing students for high absenteeism is not an effective way to encourage students to attend school," Pellegrini said. "Charging students or their parents for truancy is neither an effective way to deal with a student's attendance challenges, nor is it a prudent use of court time and does not align with Niagara Catholic's values, including compassion and respecting the dignity of all people."
The Peel District School Board said that while it has "occasionally" pursued truancy charges in the past "as a last resort," it hasn't done so since 2018.
Spokesperson Malon Edwards said after reviewing the process in 2010, the board determined "that supportive interventions such as meetings, problem-solving, and letters from social workers were far more effective at improving student attendance than charges."
"Since then, and particularly following the Ministry Review, Black Student Success Strategy, and Multi-Year Strategic Plan, PDSB has intentionally discontinued the practice of laying truancy charges, as they rarely led to lasting improvements (only about 20 per cent showed short-term gains) and often marginalized or further oppressed students and families," Edwards said.
He said attendance data shows that about 10 per cent, or around 15,000 students, "experience attendance concerns," and that the board addresses this through social work supports, with the interventions focusing on mental health, personal or family concerns, crisis support and re-engagement strategies.
In Toronto, both the public and Catholic boards said they don't use the practice. The Toronto Catholic District School Board attendance counsellors reach out to families to check up on a child's well-being and offer supports if the student is "absent for more than 15 days without notice, or exhibits a poor attendance pattern."
"All assistance programs are grounded in a strengths-based, student-centred approach, rooted in the belief that students want to be in school and want to succeed," the board said.
A spokesperson for the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board said the board hasn't used the practice for a long time "because it simply wasn't an effective way of dealing with the issue of absenteeism."
Two school boards -- Conseil scolaire catholique des Grandes Rivières and Conseil scolaire du Grand Nord -- declined to comment, while the Thames Valley District School Board and Conseil scolaire public du Nord-Est de l'Ontario referred The Trillium to the freedom-of-information process.
-- With files from James Hopkin, SooToday