An ‘A’ for accountability

By NewsPress Now

The first day of school is like opening day in Major League Baseball. No matter how things went last year, a fresh start brings a new sense of optimism.

Of course, just like a 162-game season becomes a real grind, a nine-month school year is a lot of hard work. Eventually, the enthusiasm dissipates and the superintendent is not waiting outside the school to give high-fives on a cold, dark morning in February.

At some point, you have to drag yourself to school not because you want to, but because you need to. Not enough students are doing that.

The St. Joseph School District’s attendance rate fell to 77.56% in 2023-24, well short of the administration’s target of 90%. This problem is often depicted as a liability for school districts because failure to reach 80% attendance could put full state accreditation in jeopardy.

However, the ramifications of poor attendance go beyond what would be the significant fallout from a loss of accreditation. For starters, chronically absent students develop poor habits that they take into the workplace as adults.

An 80% attendance target is a low bar … and the district can’t clear it. What will a future employer think of students who miss what amounts to one of every five working days?

This bigger question, however, is what kinds of jobs will students even qualify for if they are not showing up for class and taking full advantage of an education? A student who misses too much school is at a serious disadvantage in a globally competitive economy.

So the school district should do everything it can to reverse this troubling trend, including positive reinforcement for those who show improvement and disciplinary action, including criminal charges or failure to advance, for chronic offenders. Buchanan County and the SJSD are jointly funding a diversion officer to address truancy, an effort that deserves strong support.

But this effort proves futile without buy-in from students and parents and an acknowledgment that school attendance is of vital long-term importance. Ours is a society that always looks for someone else to blame for problems that are often of our own making. We see this in national politics where one candidate seems to blame everything on illegal immigrants and the other wants to point a finger at big businesses.

It’s not a stretch to suggest that today’s absent students become tomorrow’s adults who look anyplace but in the mirror for the cause of their troubles.

Good attendance starts at home. Parents and students need to own it or be willing to pay the consequences down the road.

The governor’s selective enforcement

Gov. Mike Parson’s executive order to prohibit the sale of hemp-derived THC products must have struck a nerve with some Missouri businesses.

Not the bars and liquor stores that sell hemp-derived beverages or products like gummies. In Missouri, these low-level THC products occupy an unregulated gray area outside the domain of licensed marijuana dispensaries.

That scenario might sound familiar to the licensed casinos and legal businesses, like ACME Music & Vending in St. Joseph, who have long chaffed at the state’s failure to take action against unlicensed rogue slot machines that proliferate at truck stops, gas stations and fraternal organizations across the state.

The core issue is similar: A competitor operates under the nose of state regulators, cutting into the margins of those with a state license.

Only the marijuana industry, however, benefits from decisive action in Jefferson City. Those who have tried to stop rogue slots must be wondering when their executive order is coming.