But Darion Murphy, 11, a sixth-grader at Cole Middle School in West Oakland, donned a pair of ice skates at the Oakland Ice Center on Wednesday and demonstrated the positive side of youthful peer pressure.

Darion's class was treated to a skating party because it won an attendance contest -- for the second time in a row -- among three sixth-grade classes at Cole. A similar contest was held among five sixth-grade classes at Lowell Middle School, who had their ice skating party last month.

The parties have turned out to be an effective lure for middle school kids, the icing on the cake of an innovative school-year contest designed to get students to school every day, on time.

So on Wednesday afternoon, Darion and company were all smiles as they looped around and around to the hokey music favored by skating establishments.

The attendance contest is scored by class, not by individual student, which means the kids have to rely on each other to win. And teachers urged students to apply some of that positive peer pressure by calling their classmates when they didn't make it to school.

Truancy is a major problem in Oakland schools, where as many as 4,000 students are considered truant on any given day, according to figures presented last week at a community forum hosted by Oakland Community Organizations. Sometimes students cut class and sometimes parents keep children home for one reason or another.

Before the middle school contest started in February, some classes at Cole and Lowell were logging about 74 percent attendance. Now every class is registering at least 78 percent, and Cole's winning class had 97 percent attendance, said Sandra Sanders-West, an Oakland Police Neighborhood Services Coordinator.

One would think things could get a little testy when classmates failed to show, but that wasn't the case, Darion said. "Oh no, I didn't get mad," he said. "I try to encourage my friends to come to school more often. And I asked for their phone numbers so I could call them."

The attendance project is run by the Prescott Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council. The whole thing started when a couple of community members were racking their brains about what could be done to curb the high rate of truancy in West Oakland.

They first focused on high school students. But then somebody suggested they start earlier, in middle school before bad habits are formed. They plan to expand the contests to include the seventh and eighth grades.

"By the time they reach high school they've been with us for three years and hopefully they have a good platform," said Stefanie Parrott, a West Oakland Realtor and volunteer at Cole.

For Darion, the value of school and a good education was hammered home by his mom and dad, his college-bound sister and his brother, who is pulling down a 3.5 grade-point average at McClymonds High School.

"I'm going to college," Darion said. "I might study science."

His classmate Tanesha Walker, 12, said she has noticed a big reduction in absences and tardiness since the contest started.

"Everybody was happy and started coming to school more often because they wanted the skating party," Tanesha said. "There were some students who missed school a lot, but not now.

Tanesha said she never misses school, and it's not just because of the pizza, Power Bars and punch. But for some of her classmates, making it to school can be an uphill battle, like one student who is often absent when it rains because her mom doesn't want to drive her to school, said Sanders-West. If the family doesn't care whether the child makes it to school, the child has to find positive reinforcement somewhere else.

"This helps because it is a community-run project and people actually care," she said. "When we were growing up, our parents and neighbors cared, and now these kids know that the community cares about their education."

The San Francisco Foundation is paying for the parties, which cost about $250 each. The attendance committee augments the good times with classroom visits to talk to the kids and reinforce the link between good attendance, a good education and a brighter future.

The Prescott community isn't the only one grappling with the issue of truancy and finding ways to reduce it.

Sanders-West attended the forum on truancy hosted by OCO and was pleased to hear that 48 parent volunteers will be making visits to the homes of the most chronically absent high school students.

"One of the things we discussed at that meeting is that kids this age become victims," she said. "They get pulled into (bad things), so if we start with them at this age, we catch them early."

Oakland Police Lt. Paul Berlin patrols West Oakland and stopped by the party to say "Hi" to the kids. He blames a big bump in home burglaries lately on youth with way too much time on their hands, and he's pleased to see programs that help keep them in school.

"These days we have to step up and make sure we reward kids for going to school because they don't get that positive reinforcement, they only hear about the bad things," he said. "Hopefully it will pay off."

The Oakland Tribune: Cityside
Leanne McLaughlin, Managing Editor
(510) 208-6447
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lmclaughlin@angnewspapers.com Email