Contest Winner Tips: Looking at Truancy

Editor's note: EWA will post tips and advice over the next two weeks from first-prize winners of EWA's National Awards for Education Reporting. Lauren Smiley of SF Weekly won first prize in the small-market single-day news coverage  category. 

The ABCs of Ditching School

Too many education stories let district officials and stats define the story - basically, anyone but the students themselves. Kids are inherently interesting to adult readers, and are the best sources: they'll tell you flat-out truth, often in a humorous way.

When reporting a story about the rampant truancy in San Francisco, I sought out kids hanging out on the street or in arcades during school hours, or literally running out the front door of the school.

They told me things I could have never gotten from any official source: how easy it is to intercept the district's phone calls or letters to their parents, how some teachers didn't even mark them absent half the time, the hot spots to hang out at while playing hooky. Just make sure you get all the information you need the first time you talk to them. Teens, especially truant ones, are not great about returning phone calls.