Losing the Battle : Education: Truancy is a major problem even at good schools such as Taft High in Woodland Hills. Friends, fun or drugs may lure students out, and fences don’t keep them in.

A stretch of chain-link fence is all that separates the strictures of school from the lure of freedom at Taft High School in Woodland Hills.

It is a symbol of the losing battle against truancy.

Taft is one of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s flagship schools, home to national champion Academic Decathlon teams.

It is among the top 10 district high schools in test scores and academic programs, but with 17% of its students missing school each day, it ranks in the middle in absenteeism and truancy.

Even here, cutting school is so common that most students don’t even bother to call the practice ditching.

It sounds like junior high school. We say, ‘Let’s leave,’ and we just go.”

And they do--by the dozens, each day. They skip school to meet friends, take drugs, buy snacks, break the law or just kill time. As at schools citywide, there are as many reasons as ways to leave Taft.

Students ditch because a substitute is teaching English that day or a video is being shown in history class or they have the urge to grab a smoke.

They escape through back doors, side doors, even the front door.

On a recent day, 40 students crawled through a hole in the chain-link fence at the rear of the campus. A day later, after the hole was repaired, the teen-agers simply hopped the fence.

Some students stay close to campus, gathering at a shopping center across the street, with its pizza parlor, bagel shop and grocery store. They congregate in cars or on curbs or just walk the streets. Many return to the same ditch spot day after day.

On a recent morning, three students in baggy, knee-length shorts and flannel shirts sat in a red pickup truck parked on a street behind campus. They were bored with the routine of school, but not the routine of ditching. It is more interesting, they say, to sit and “kick it” with friends than to attend classes.

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For students with cars, the Ventura Freeway is only a block away. They head for friends’ houses, left empty by working parents, or board city buses to visit girlfriends and boyfriends at nearby schools.

Some join with friends and go tagging, defacing walls, fences, billboards and garages with their spray-painted graffiti.

“I run the 818,” Manuel said, referring to the San Fernando Valley branch of a Los Angeles tagging crew. “We’re battling [to see which crew puts up the most graffiti], and I need to get going.”

Manuel ditches so much he has been to his sixth-period class only once this semester.

“I have no clue where it’s at or anything,” he said, running his hand over his shaved head. “The teacher? I don’t even know who that is.”

Unlike the unabashed Manuel, some students are reluctant to reveal their truancy routines--not for fear of getting caught, but because it might lead to a crackdown on truancy at Taft.

Their stories have a veneer of rebellion that hides troubles at home, problems learning and an indifference to the rules. And they are mirrored at campuses across the city.

For some, truancy is an occasional vice. But for many others, it is a daily habit that ends only when they drop out of school.

Taft senior Daniel Meyers is probably going to graduate, but he isn’t much interested in college. He lives in Woodland Hills with his parents and works at a Nordstrom department store. And he spends parts of nearly every day ditching school.

Wearing two gold hoops in one ear and a gold stud in the other, he explained, “School is just not for me.”

His mother, Carol, says she knows--sometimes--when Daniel skips classes. But she believes the school is at fault for giving its charges “a lot of freedom--too much.”

Teachers and administrators often seem to look the other way as students slip out.

Every morning, two teachers take a cigarette break at the rear door of the campus but never question students who are leaving in droves. Other teachers pass ditching students on the way to the local mini-mall without saying a word.

Employees of nearby shops occasionally complain about their truant customers but admit that they depend on the students for business.

“It’s like a love-hate relationship,” said Mike Novack, the manager of I & Joy Bagels, close enough to Taft to hear the school bell ring. “They’re definitely a major part of our business.”

Mike Korp, a security officer who patrols the shopping center, used to ditch when he was a student at Chatsworth High School. He is on a first-name basis with many of Taft’s regular ditchers--friendly even as he tries to persuade them to leave the shops.

“The best thing they could do,” Korp said, pointing to Taft, “is to offer classes that kids want to take.”

With 2,600 students, Taft has only two aides who are responsible for keeping students on the sprawling 33-acre campus.

But there are dozens of escape routes.

“If I had a ton of money and I could hire at least four more aides and station them at certain key points, maybe we could make a difference,” said Taft Assistant Principal Howard Reisbord.

Taft students say it is frequently harder to get back into school than it is to leave, because they must time their return to coincide with lunch or the few minutes between periods when the halls are filled as classes change.

School administrators conduct daily sweeps through the hallways, herding late students into an empty classroom, where they must remain until the next class begins.

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Jonathan, a Taft freshman, takes off with Barry, an 18-year-old who has already been expelled for truancy.

They spend the morning roaming the streets around campus--a routine broken by the school bell signaling lunch.

Then the teen-agers decide to sneak into school. They jump over the fence, visit with friends, then leave campus again.

Some truants are youngsters who have been moved from school to school because they are troublemakers, creating a rootlessness that makes it hard for them to feel connected to Taft.

Lee is one.

The 16-year-old sophomore was most recently expelled from Taft for truancy. He stopped by the campus recently to pick up his transcripts to take to his third high school.

“Transferring us around doesn’t really help,” he said, pushing his shoulder-length wavy hair off his face. “It keeps the ones who are not doing well down.”

Like other suburban campuses, Taft has a large contingent of bused students--some of whom take the bus to campus only to connect with friends and run the streets, returning to Taft in time to be bused back home.

To combat that problem, Taft now requires each bused student to show the bus driver a pass signed by their sixth-period teacher.

Nathana Schooler, the district’s director of attendance and dropout prevention, said students do not see the consequences of ditching until they drop out and face the prospect of a lifetime of minimum-wage jobs. A good deal of responsibility belongs to school officials, parents and others in the community, she said during an interview at a coffee shop near Taft.

About that time, two ninth-graders strolled by.

Schooler sighed.

“Schools need to work with these kids,” she said. “[But] it takes somebody to pay attention to what’s going on.”