18 Florida Parents Jailed for Not Sending Kids to School

Fail to send your kid to school and you could end up behind bars.

That’s the message 18 parents in Florida’s Duval County received recently when the sheriff’s office there began a concerted effort to crackdown on habitual truancy. The sweep, which began over the weekend, includes warrants for a total of 44 parents, according to The Florida Times-Union. Those 44 are the parents of Duval County’s most notorious truants.

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The parents targeted in the sweep all face contributing to a delinquency of a minor and failure to comply with compulsory school attendance laws charges. Both are misdemeanors, but can carry up to a one-year jail sentence, First Coast News Reported.

One of the parents arrested in the warrants sweep has a 9-year-old first-grader who has missed a total of 239 days of school since 2011, the Times-Union reported. All told the 44 truancy cases add up to a combined 6,558 days of missed classes over the course of three years.

“The truancy sweep is necessary to send a clear message to our parents that this behavior is not acceptable,” State Attorney Angela Corey was quoted by First Coast News as saying.

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