Daytime curfew could generate money for schools
POLICE HDQTRS. — Since its inception nearly 12 years ago, Santa Monica’s nighttime curfew has apparently been successful in keeping kids of the streets.
Just 19 juveniles were cited for violating the nighttime curfew in 2004, police said. Those numbers are down significantly from when the law went into effect in 1993. One-hundred-twenty-one juveniles were arrested on curfew violations in the first year, according to city records.
The nighttime curfew forbids youth from hanging out or congregating after 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and after 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Youth arrested for more serious offenses late at night often are not charged with curfew violations.
“The intent of the law is to control juveniles who have no business on the street other than loitering or looking to get into trouble,” said Santa Monica Police Department Lt. Frank Fabrega. “If a juvenile, someone under the age of 18, is going from point A to point B, that’s not an issue.”
City Councilman Herb Katz, who was in office when the curfew was adopted, said he thought the law has been effective.
“I think it (the curfew) does put in some controls and keeps them in line, and keeps them from running amok,” Katz said. “What is a 14-year-old doing running around on the streets at midnight, for their own safety and the rest of the world?”
In an attempt to keep kids in class, police for months have considered a possible Santa Monica daytime youth curfew, though SMPD Chief James T. Butts Jr. said Thursday it was not a top priority.
Still, school officials have expressed interest in a daytime curfew, which could be modeled after one in Monrovia, Calif. Students caught violating the daytime curfew in Monrovia either pay a $135 fine or are sentenced to 27 hours of community service.
Within three years of instituting its “anti-truancy” ordinance in 1994, Monrovia schools saw a 39 percent decline in the number of unexcused absences, while the city experienced a 29 percent reduction in crime during school hours, according to former Monrovia Police Department Chief Joseph A. Santoro, who said 89 percent of inmates have a history of truancy.
Like it did in Monrovia, a daytime curfew ordinance could help generate money for the local school district. State funding relies largely on average daily attendance records, so more absences mean less money. said the local district averages about 95 percent attendance, which is above the roughly 91 percent state average. That means on any given day 12,000 students attend schools in Santa Monica and Malibu, and the district is paid about $5,200 for each.
Average daily attendance revenues account for more than $62 million of the district’s $101 million annual budget, added Deasy, who said if every student attended class every day the district would be entitled to nearly $3 million more in state funds.
Still, Deasy said most absences are for legitimate reasons — not because students are skipping class.
“The overwhelming majority are because of sickness or doctors appointments,” he said.
Ilene Straus, principal of Santa Monica High School, agreed most students do not have a habit of ditching, but said it was a serious problem nonetheless.
“Truancy is an issue for us,” she said. “We have about 3,400 students at our school and there are about 100 students on our radar as having an attendance problem.”
“Truancy is an issue for us.” — — ILENE STRAUS Principal, Samohi
Whether those numbers will be enough to justify a new curfew is unclear.
“Ordinarily you institute a daytime curfew, and the school district agrees, (in communities) where you have a big problem with school absenteeism,” Butts said Thursday. “Juveniles are not home and sick, but out and about... and second, you have a high rate of daytime burglaries that you suspect are juvenile based.
“It doesn’t appear that it’s something that is jumping out at us as a necessary crime-control strategy at this time.”
The number of burglaries in Santa Monica has been on a steady decline for 10 years and are at their lowest levels since 1957, according to Butts.
Deasy said any daytime curfew would have to be preceded by ample study.
“A carefully thought-out policy, or law, would really need the input of a lot of constituency groups — PTA, the community leaders, principals, the (school) board,” Deasy said this week. “I guess I’d want to be really careful that no law targeted one group of students differently than another. I’d want to know the race and ethnicity of those citations, if we went down that road.”
A heightened police presence alone won’t solve the ongoing problem, Straus added.
“I think that it’s going to take all of us working together on truancy to try and get a handle on it,” she said this week. “That means we’re going to have work with parents, students, and the police department and the district system.”
Fabrega said officials will continue to enforce a Los Angeles County curfew that forbids youngsters from being on the streets from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
A total of 15 juveniles were cited for breaking that law in 2004, according to Fabrega. Santa Monica sometimes chooses to institute its own ordinance in order to control specific language governing how the laws are enforced and what punishments they carry, Fabrega said.
While authorities decide how to proceed, at least some local youth seem unconcerned about the possibility of a new daytime curfew. Samohi sophomore Tiimo Schulze, 15, and senior Anthony May, 17, both said a daytime curfew seemed fair.
As to the nighttime curfew already on the books, the teenagers thought they deserved a little more flex time on weekends, but otherwise were OK with it, too.
“The police already seem pretty lax about it,” May said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 28, 2005. Read the original PDF.