MoCo truancy program helping students graduate

Monterey County is being recognized for getting kids back into the classroom. Now its program aimed at kids who skip class is getting statewide attention after receiving a prestigious award. On Wednesday, NewsChannel 5 spoke with two students who turned their lives around.

The truancy program has been around for more than 25 years in Monterey County. Monterey County District Attorney Dean Flippo said at one point he figured keeping kids in school and out of trouble would ultimately keep the community safer.

“If you aren’t in school you are out on the streets you are going to get into trouble you are going to get caught you are going to be prosecuted and they you are going to have to deal with the law,” Flippo said.

That tough love shook Carlos Jimenez to the core.

“If I didn’t go to school again, they’d fine me, with courts with fines and law,” Jimenez said.

But Jimenez said the program worked and is turning his life around. He wants to work in the pharmaceutical field.

Jimenez and Danielle Rodriguez’s stories are two of the more than 1,200 plus meditations that happen every year. Prosecutors said over 800 of those kids stopped cutting class.

Rodriguez, who now attends Hartnell College, offered a message to those who find themselves in spot where they don’t want to be in school.

“It gets better in the end. No matter how bad it seems, it will be better,” Rodriguez said.

The DA’s office said that school districts across the state and across the country have approached them to learn more about the program because it has been so successful.