We believe

A policy being considered by South Madison Community Schools should give parents of disruptive students every opportunity to get involved before being reported to Child Protective Services.

School administrators and teachers routinely lament lack of parent involvement when it comes to troubled students. The root of the problem, often, is that the parents just don’t care. Hence, the kids don’t care either.

South Madison Community Schools officials are seeking to do something more about parental “educational neglect” by considering a policy that would enable the schools to contact Child Protective Services in cases where students have a pattern of disruptive behavior and parents won’t work with the schools to break the pattern.

While the initiative to spur parental involvement is a good one and schools should consider a broad range of possibilities to accomplish this, the policy should clearly stipulate that reporting a parent to CPS should occur only as a last resort, after a long list of other alternatives has been exhausted. And then, the policy would need to be enforced with common sense, so that parents who are making some sort of effort to improve a child’s classroom behavior are spared the stigma that accompanies being reported to CPS.

CPS is an arm of the Indiana Department of Child Services. On the agency’s Web site (www.in.gov.dcs), CPS’ mission is defined: “Child Protective Services protects Indiana’s children from further abuse or neglect and prevents, remedies or assists in solving problems that may result in abuse, neglect, exploitation or delinquency of children.”

South Madison already has the policy of reporting parents to CPS when a student shows signs of physical or emotional abuse or has been habitually absent. It’s not a stretch to say that failing to require one’s child to attend school is “neglectful,” and therefore this policy makes sense.

It’s stretching the definition of neglect further to include a parent’s failure to get a child to behave appropriately and put forth effort in class.

South Madison Community School Corp. Superintendent Tom Warmke says the policy to be considered by the school board at its July 31 meeting is the same policy adopted by the Indiana School Board Association. He says it’s necessary in South Madison because the schools are having more trouble than in the past with students disrupting the learning process.

Under the policy, administrators could require parents to do things that involved parents often do — review school assignments, pick up children from school on time and attend meetings. The policy would also enable administrators to require parents to be involved in behavioral testing, counseling and detention of a child. If the parents failed to do what was required, a school administrator could decide to report them to CPS. Warmke would review the case before CPS was contacted.

“The policy is not a first line of defense,” Warmke said in an article published in the weekly Pendleton News. “It is a last resort.”

When it comes to reporting parents to CPS, it should indeed be the very last resort.