Be Quiet and Go Away

January 27, 2009 -- The mercury dropped below freezing as the "worst ice storm in nearly 6 years" headed toward the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex on January 27, 2009. The storm threatened to deposit up to 1/4 inch of freezing rain on North Texas roads throughout the evening. The weather service issued travel advisories, warning people to stay off the roads.

Yet, the Bedford City Council meeting went on as scheduled, forcing many citizens to brave the elements to attend the meeting. The juvenile daytime curfew issue was on the agenda that night, and the citizens of Bedford packed the council chamber, determined to make their voices heard.

Councilman Jeff Cason, who placed the juvenile daytime curfew item on the agenda, very humbly admitted that he did not do his due diligence before voting on the issue initially. He stated that he simply could not connect the dots, even after hearing the arguments made by the police chief and school district at the work session on December 16, 2008.

Cason made the point during the meeting that 60% of property taxes go to the school district, while only 15% go to the city, and that from a taxpayer standpoint if the school district was receiving that much money they should do their job and not place an added burden on the city's police resources.

Cason went on to say that what really brought this issue to light for him was his concern as a parent. He said that as a teenager he was in a work-study program, and he would drive his '57 Chevy to work. He realized that if his son were in that circumstance today, as a parent he would be concerned that his son might be stopped by a police officer during the day on his way to work and possibly given a citation for being in public. He admitted that he made a big mistake by voting for this ordinance and was seeking its repeal.

Most of the rest of the council members were not in agreement with the idea of a repeal, and the council chambers grew heated as a couple of the council members argued the issue.

One council member, Chris Brown, expressed his desire that this would become a "dead issue" and that the citizens could "put this behind them" because the council had other more pressing issues to decide. Click here to watch the video.

A second council member, Lori Nail, wondered why this issue was only coming up in Bedford. She stated that she was "puzzled" as to why the city of Euless had only one person come before them to speak about the issue, while the city of Bedford has had continuous "visitors" on the issue.

She stated that if the citizens were "truly passionate about their liberties," they would be discussing this issue with the Euless City Council as well. She did not feel that this curfew would impact anyone's liberties, and went on to say that the government gave home schoolers their right to home school and the government wasn't taking that away. Click here to watch the video.

Council member Nail mentioned that the school district approached the city asking for the curfew ordinance. She stated that if Cason couldn't connect the dots he should have sought additional information from the school district.

Cason argued that the school district did not make a compelling case to justify the need for or the effectiveness of the daytime curfew. He felt that the curfew was not the best solution to the problem, particularly since there were so many citizens concerned about their right to move about freely in society without being suspected or questioned without cause.

Council member Nail stated that "it's very dangerous when people start throwing arrows and saying we're taking away freedoms" and that citizens are "not being fair in how they're defending their beliefs."

Nail also mentioned that while there are three school entities: public school, private school, and home schoolers, the council had only heard from home schoolers. She felt that if there were a real concern, they would have heard from representatives from those other entities as well. Click here to watch the video.

What the council did not know was that there were families from all sides of the issue in attendance at the meeting that night: home schoolers, private school students, a public school parent and veteran police officer, a public school parent who is now a home schooler, a former public school teacher who is now a grandmother of home schooled children . . . all speaking in opposition to the daytime curfew.

You can imagine the comments that came from the public during the Open Forum. The overall tone of the council was very condescending, and many people objected to the council telling its citizens, whom they supposedly serve, to shut up about this issue and go to another city to voice their concerns.

The icy weather outside did not put a chill on the fiery indignation of the citizens. A wide range of opinions were presented as home schoolers, private schoolers, public schoolers, and other concerned citizens let the council know that they were not going to be silenced, nor were they going away.

They Meant Well

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. [Persons] born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
(Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead vs US, 1927)

Good intentions are not bad, in and of themselves; but, the means by which those intentions are accomplished can often have very unpredictable, unfavorable results which might not manifest until much later - when those original intentions are long forgotten.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I truly believe that the Bedford and Euless City Councils had good intentions when they sought to help the HEB school district with its purported truancy problem by enacting a juvenile daytime curfew at the district's request.

When the home school community spoke out against the daytime curfew, the police chiefs in both Bedford and Euless assured its citizens that it was not their intent to target home schoolers with the ordinance.

I sincerely believe them. But the councils and police chiefs simply can't speak for those who will take their place in years to come. Who knows how a restrictive ordinance, such as this one, will be interpreted or used 5, 10, or even 20 years from now?

A common phrase parroted by the police chiefs and councils is: we don't foresee a homeschool family being the target of this ordinance. We've also heard the argument that our police chief runs a tight ship and that city officials have complete faith that our officers are able to determine a real truant from a home school child.

We don't forsee.... We don't intend.... Those words are nothing more than a verbal handshake. The truth is, no matter how well-intentioned a council may be, and no matter how well-trained a police force is, there will always be mistakes. Police officers are human, and it is only reasonable to assume that an individual officer might make a human error on any given day.

There is evidence of this happening all across the state, where home schoolers have been harassed by police officers simply because they were out in public during curfew hours, even though no actual crime was being committed. And the fact that "home schooling" was among the list of defenses didn't make an ounce of difference.

I'm positive that those councils and police chiefs never intended for those unfortunate situations to happen...but when it comes right down to it, they simply have no say in how those situations involving otherwise innocent families will play out in court. Intentions are not guarantees.

The intentions of the city councils or their respective police chiefs will most likely be lost and forgotten in time. But their legacy will remain: an ordinance on the books that makes it illegal for any minor 17 years old or younger to be out in public during school hours. And the list of "defenses" will be essentially meaningless for those innocent families without the resources to defend themselves in court. When you go to court, you are automatically presumed guilty. What will it take to prove your innocence?

The law that the councils intend to use as a "strong deterrant" today, could be strictly enforced tomorrow depending on the interpretation of the city leadership to come. The letter of the law will likely prevail if the original intent cannot be established.

Ever heard of function creep? This is what occurs when an item, procedure, or process designed for a specific purpose ends up, over time, being used to serve another purpose for which it was never intended.

Case in point: the Social Security Number. Back in 1936, the stated purpose of the social security number was to facilitate record-keeping so that the proper amount of Social Security taxes were credited to a contributor's account. The government assured the public that Social Security Numbers were never intended to be used for identification purposes. In fact, each card bore the inscription, "Not for identification."

By 1961, the IRS began using Social Security Numbers for tax identification purposes. By 2002, many transactions from credit, to employment, to insurance required Social Security Numbers before they could be validated. Today, Social Security Numbers are mandatory identification, and are valued so much that criminals try to gain access to them: we call it identity theft.

What I want to emphasize is this: To have a law on the books that is broader in scope than what is necessary to address the problem at hand is simply unwise. Particularly in the case of truancy, when there are already state laws on the books to handle those specific situations.

Citizens need to speak up and use their voting power as a strong deterrant to unseat zealous leaders who don't see freedoms and civil rights as something worth defending.

The Debate Gets Heated

On December 16, 2008, the Bedford City Council held a work session, inviting the HEB-ISD and Bedford Police Chief to present their case for the juvenile daytime curfew ordinance.

Hang on a minute. The Bedford police chief helped the HEB-ISD make its case? There's something wrong with that picture.

During the work session, the police chief honestly admitted that there were no numbers to show the effectiveness or measure the impact of a daytime curfew. However, he said that he views the daytime curfew as "another tool in their tool belt" in the fight against truancy.

The school district and police chief complained that the compulsory attendance statute is too cumbersome, does not offer a strong enough deterrent, and requires too many unexcused absences before a student can be appropriately punished for truant behavior. They stated that the daytime curfew would allow them to punish a child on a first-time offense - instead of the 10 required by the state compulsory attendance law - and would allow for "intervention very, very early," before the child moves on to bigger crimes.

Did you get that? They want to inflict a fine and Class C misdemeanor charge on a child on the very first unexcused absence. Does one unexcused absence make a child truant? Not according to state truancy laws.

The district and police chief maintained that the juvenile daytime curfew would offer an immediate and strong deterrent, and would hold the parent accountable, since the curfew stipulates a fine to the parent as well as the child.

I should point out that the ordinance not only inflicts a fine of up to $500 for the child as well as the parent, but also stipulates a fine on a business owner or employee if a minor is found on the premises. Couple that with the fact that the ordinance also carries a Class C Misdemeanor charge, per offender.

What the school district and police chief are saying is that they don't want to hassle with the compulsory attendance statute. They would rather take the law into their own hands through the juvenile daytime curfew, which lays all the burden on a parent, child and business owner. The school district, on the other hand, gets to shift its statutory responsibilities onto the cities, at taxpayer expense.

If the HEB-ISD feels that 10 unexcused absences are too many, a better approach might be for the district to appeal to the Texas legislature to reduce the number of unexcused absences allowed by the compulsory attendance statute, rather than bypassing those laws by asking cities to enact another law which unfairly infringes on the rights of so many other students who have a legitimate reason to be out in public and who are not enrolled in the HEB-ISD or follow their school schedule.

A homeschool dad brought everything into perspective during the Open Forum. Using the district's own numbers, he calculated that the urgent truancy problem for which the district claimed they needed immediate action, amounted to only 1% of the total school days. The district offered no trend analysis that would indicate that truancy was a growing problem, no comparisons to other school districts, in fact no statistical data at all.

The very thing the district was so proud to announce - the difference in truancy rates since enacting the curfew - amounted to just .1 of 1% - a statistically irrelevant figure. The district had no basis to justify such a gross infringement of liberties.

The debate in Bedford was heating up.

The $1.2 Million Question

The first real news of the juvenile daytime curfew ordinances in Euless and Bedford came through the media. An October 4, 2008, Star-Telegram article stated that the reason the district had asked for the curfew was "to curb truancy." Debbie Tribble from the HEB-ISD stated in the article that the school district "lost $1.2 million because of truancy last year."

Wait a minute. Aren't there already truancy laws on the books? Why, then, was the HEB school district asking the cities to enact a juvenile daytime curfew?

That question was also on the minds of many citizens, who wrote letters to their respective City Council representatives letting them know that they were not pleased with the juvenile daytime curfew ordinances passed in Euless and Bedford. Since the curfew had not been placed on Hurst's agenda, citizens of Hurst wrote their councilmembers to let them know that they would be opposed to such an ordinance.

In Bedford, citizens also voiced their opinions at the city council meetings. Many who protested the ordinance were home school parents, who argued that there was a multitude of legitimate reasons for their children to be out in public during the "school hours" set by the school district: a teenager driving himself to a class or to work, or running an errand for a parent; a child walking the dog around the block or riding his bike for PE; a child playing in his front yard or at the park after completing his schoolwork for the day; children outside on their school break or on their family vacation.

Although Bedford's juvenile daytime curfew ordinance includes home schoolers in the list of "defenses to prosecution," it is up to an individual officer's discretion to decide if they will write a citation, putting a family in the situation of having to go to court to defend themselves. Guilty until proven innocent.

So, the $1.2 million question is: Can a school district ask a city to enact a law that is purely in the district's own special interest?

Sure it can. But, the city does not have to comply with that request, particularly without the input of the taxpayers it represents.