Gratiot County School Justice Partnership Action Plan

Gratiot County is currently working on building a home team and enhancing our capacity to examine truancy and school exclusion issues within our communities. We began the process of forming our home team by meeting individually with potential partners to explain the School to Prison Pipeline initiative and asking for their support. The courts and schools have previously met to discuss Truancy and an informal network of partners exists. At this time, we are building capacity to identify priority concerns and current policies and practices to enable us to make informed and effective action steps moving forward in the strategic planning process.

In 2013, the 29th Circuit Court- Family Division (Juvenile Office) began an initiative to increase capacity to address early intervention in school truancy cases. Based on a three step intervention system, schools can refer a family for participation in a truancy intervention process in order to assist them in becoming compliant with attendance laws. Though in the early stages, this process is a significant step in enhancing prevention and problem solving efforts in the community. The Juvenile Office will also be supporting the county team with resources to assist in data collection, facilitating the creation of the county’s action plan, and supporting the collaborative process.

Currently, the Juvenile Office has initiated a plan for data collection in order to accurately identify areas of concern and create a picture of truancy and school exclusion in our county. This will include collecting information about the current intervention practices that exist within our various county school districts. Additionally, we have identified and received commitment from Gratiot County Community Mental Health to examine situations related to school refusal and mental health factors that impact attendance and discipline concerns.

During 2014, we will solidify partnerships, collect the needed data, and then move forward in the planning process and logic model development as a home team.

2014 action plan steps include:

  1. Raiseawareness about the school to prison pipeline and School Justice Partnership initiative
  2. Identify partners and the roles of partners within the Gratiot County Home Team
  3. Create a data collection method and disseminate information requests to various partners
  4. Collect and analyze local data and information regarding best practices
  5. Provide a report to the identified home team for problem identification, prioritization and logic model development
  6. The home team will select priority strategies, identify roles and responsibilities, and initiate strategies