the killings of four children in Mechanicville<\/a> over the summer.<\/p>\nWhile the circumstances differ, both cases have pushed lawmakers and law enforcement officials to examine how communities identify and respond to concerns when children who are not attending school in person, and what to do when children have fewer community eyes on them and signs point to an unsafe situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen children are in school \u2014\u00a0 it also means more eyes are on the children,\u201d said Fahy.<\/p>\n
The children killed in Mechanicville were homeschooled. An attorney for their father told Spectrum News 1 this week that Saratoga County officials were aware of potential danger to the children. County officials did not comment due to pending litigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s one horrific extreme example; eyes were off of those kids,\u201d Fahy said.<\/p>\n
Her office told Spectrum News 1 the new legislation is intended to enhance existing continuity reviews for homeschooled students and require greater scrutiny when students transition to home instruction.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe in New York are considered to have some of the more stringent requirements, but even in New York you have paperwork to fill out, but you are only required to show assessments or progress once per year,\u201d Fahy said.<\/p>\n
The effort builds on the other two bills introduced after last year\u2019s Fourth of July violence in Albany. One would track chronic absenteeism in real time, while the other would bring together community partners to address individual cases.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Saratoga County District Attorney Brett Eby has convened a child safety commission following the Mechanicville killings and the separate death of a 3-year-old in nearby Corinth that authorities say was caused by neglect.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re bringing in partners from all aspects of child safety so we have people from school districts, law enforcement, the family court system,\u201d Eby said of the commission, which met for the first time this month.<\/p>\n
The Republican district attorney said chronic absenteeism quickly emerged as a top concern during the commission\u2019s first meeting.<\/p>\n
He said the group\u2019s frustration was clear.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still investigating what happened in Mechanicville, but I think nationwide we\u2019ve seen a correlation between absenteeism and truancy and abuse and neglect cases,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Eby said the county could seek to bolster a partnership between his office, law enforcement and the school district to better investigate individual cases. But added that when responding to the Mechanicville case specifically solutions must also protect families who homeschool for legitimate reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe case in Mechanicville is an abuse of that system. Those kids were not properly educated. They were pulled for what seem to be nefarious reasons. It doesn\u2019t seem they were getting a proper education. Obviously there are people in Saratoga County who are homeschooling for valid reasons,\u201d Eby said.<\/p>\n
Fahy, who has sounded the alarm over rates of homeschooling and chronic absenteeism not returning to normal levels in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, stressed in an interview with Spectrum News 1 that her intention is not to target that legitimate homeschooling. She hopes legislation can specifically assist reporting in cases where students are pulled from school due to circumstances at home rather than a legitimate educational preference that works within New York\u2019s guardrails.<\/p>\n
With a fiscal impact of at least $150 million over two years, Fahy\u2019s full proposal would likely need to be included in the state budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the problem of chronic absenteeism in New York\u2019s schools has been growing for some time, a pair…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[116,295,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,112,87,200],"class_list":["post-361326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-app-ny-state-of-politics","tag-jack-arpey","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-ny-state-of-politics","tag-politics","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}