CAPTION: City Councilors Maureen Feeney, John Connolly, and Chuck Turner led the June 1 truancy hearing held in the Christopher A. Iannella Chamber.

For Harley Allen, school and classrooms meant something “meaningless.” The 15-year-old always skipped school and hung out with friends at the Boys & Girls Club. However, after he enrolled in the Alternative Middle School program at the Little House at Federated Dorchester Neighborhood Houses, school has been his second home.

“I used to skip school and made my parents ashamed of me,” said Allen, an eighth grader at Little House. “Now I’m excited about coming to school. I do my homework. I have a 3.5 GPA and [I’m] on my way to my first year in high school in North Carolina. Little House has given me a community where I talk to my parents and my teacher. And that makes me want to go to school.”

Allen was one of two students who testified at a June 1 hearing held by the Boston City Council’s Committee on Education to implement a chronic truancy intervention program focusing on parental accountability and family engagement. The hearing, which was held in the Christopher A. Iannella Chamber, aimed to push Boston Public Schools (BPS) to adopt a parental accountability model for truant students.

Representatives from BPS, judiciary and law enforcement departments, and non-project organizations attended.

Chronic truancy continues to be a critical problem citywide. At-Large City Councilor John Connolly described chronic truancy as a leading indicator of a student’s likelihood of dropping out of school, which in turn, has profound economic and social consequences. Truancy is a predictor of low academic achievement, drug use, arrests, and generally, a life of unemployment and poverty, he said.

“It’s safe to say that chronic truancy is not a predictor of dropping out, but an absolute guarantee,” said Connolly, acting chair of the education committee.

“Truancy is eliminating a young person’s future,” he added. “Students who are truant are not only missing a day worth of education but they are on a road to suspension and expulsion.”

According to the National Center for School Engagement, 70 percent of suspended youth were chronically truant six months prior to the suspension. Ninety-seven percent of expelled youth were chronically truant prior to expulsion.

Early intervention with an emphasis on parent participation and involvement is key to combating truancy, said Connolly.

“It’s not a one-child or one-school issue. We need to address this issue as a family issue. It is a serious issue and intervening early is critical to keep a child on track and on a pathway to success,” said Connolly. “Stopping chronic truancy or the signs of future chronic truancy in elementary school is perhaps the best policy to stop dropping out.”

The proposal for parental responsibility is not reinventing the wheel, he said, but modeled from the successful project of the Waterbury Board of Education in Connecticut. Started in 2007, the Waterbury Truancy Clinic has operated as a by-product of the Waterbury Regional Children’s Probate Court, one of the five regional children’s courts in Connecticut. The Regional Children’s Courts work to maintain and support family preservation, to deter the court’s children from future involvement with other court systems, to mitigate their mental health issues and to encourage their educational success.

The next step after the hearing is discussion with BPS and to put the plan into practice, with a focus on elementary school students, said Connolly.

“It’s a key to keeping kids on the right track. No matter situations you have to empower the parents to be active in their child and keep them on track to be successful in life. And that requires early intervention. Before it’s too late, we have to make sure that you get parents involved from the early stages,” he said.

Parents and representatives from various organizations shared their opinions on the chronic absenteeism issue. Regina Boyd, a mother of a 14-year-old son from Roxbury, said a strong relationship between parents and schools are important in preventing children from truancy.

For the past three years her son has been expelled from three different schools. Now her son is succeeding at the Little House, where parents can sit in the classroom with their children, and participatory and open conversation is encouraged, she said.

“I was able to get consistent updates about his progress in school. This allows me to get a better understanding of how my child was behaving when I was not around,” she said. “The school understands that the parent and teacher collaboration is essential to my child. At Little House they are not talking at him but working together with him as a team. I’m more than welcomed to call them up there. I go up there and can sit in the classroom, observe, listen, and see what’s going on.”

Councilor Maureen Feeney also agreed that parent engagement would decrease truancy and develop a healthier relationship between children and their parents.

“Suspending someone is only sending him to further isolation. And it’s so important that when kids are crying out loud for support that we not push them away but bring them closer,” she said.

Suffolk County Juvenile Court Judge Leslie Harris said suspension, which is commonly used to punish students, does not work effectively.

“It is a reward, not a punishment,” said Harris. “There should be a penalty for coming to school late, not a reward by locking them out of the building. It makes no sense because those kids will end up being in front of us in the court and have criminal records that will follow them for the rest of their lives.”

Mark Gillespie, Lieutenant Detective of the MBTA Police Department, said dropout problems stem from a failure in maintaining regular school attendance, and that students who come to school late should not be kicked out of school.

“Students have got kicked out of school because they don’t go to school on time. They shouldn’t be kicked out of school and hang out downtown because their skirts are too short,” said Gillespie. “It’s the fact that you have a meaningful conversation. Just take a handful time with them talking to them, asking them why they are late, and letting them know you care. They might not be late again the next day.”