Truancy issues discussed at RHBA meeting

The topic of juvenile truancy dominated the conversation at the Richmond Hill Block Association (RHBA) meeting on Wednesday evening, February 28.
The evening began with Deputy Mayor Dennis Wolcott, RHBA’s special guest, thanking the organization for its work in helping the children of the Richmond Hill school district. “We are fully committed to providing quality education in the city,” said Walcott.
Several police officers dispatched to patrol schools throughout Queens gave a brief presentation on what they do to help reduce truancy among young people. Officer Tom Barrett, who is stationed at Queens South, said that school safety officers help keep schools problem free for the children as well as the surrounding community.
“School safety agents are assigned to a particular school and within the perimeter of the school,” said Walcott.
According to the Deputy Mayor, school police have more work to do in eliminating chronic truancy, but have made steady progress up until now.
“We have balanced the number of crimes committed with the number of arrests,” he said.
Ray Gocheekit, a Richmond Hill resident, countered, saying that police do not do their jobs effectively enough to boast a significant decline in truancy.
“Why do you have to wait for a full-blown incident to take place in order to take care of it,” asked Gocheekit, who said he is not happy that truants vandalized his property while he is held responsible for it.
School safety agents are deployed to the roughest schools, but Officers Mitt Marmara and Barrett say that Richmond Hill High School does not warrant having school safety agents on a daily basis.
Carol Bouchard, PTA Coordinator of Richmond Hill High School, said that the problem lies with a change in demographics.
“Twenty years ago we had one family per house, but now we have two or three families per house…Richmond Hill High School had about 1,800 students, now we have about 3,500 students,” said Bouchard.
Following this debate, there was also a brief presentation by Arlene Sacks, who is in charge of distributing literature for Operation Support Our Troops, an organization which provides assistance to wounded soldiers fighting overseas.
Sacks presented an award to the RHBA on behalf of the European Command of the U.S. army in recognition of its support and generosity to wounded soldiers stationed in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sacks ended the meeting by informing the audience that those who wish to contribute can go to www.west-point.org/family/support-our-troops.