When kids don't show up at school, they can wind up in trouble with the law.

Truancy is a problem in Kentucky, with one out of every four students considered chronically absent.

What can be done about it?

Before juvenile justice reforms of the last decade in Kentucky, judges and school staff in Louisville created one of the first truancy diversion programs in the nation.

Our June Lefler has this look back for our series, Beyond the Bench.

By 30 days of school.

1920 days 1210.

These middle school students participated in a court diversion program in the early 2000.

These were the kinds of kids that might wind up on a family court docket.

I was having kids come into my courtroom and some of them missed 20, 30, 40 days of school.

And the question was, what were my tools at hand to help this?

These kids reengage in the school process.

From the bench, Joan Byer felt she couldn't do much.

Simply ordering a kid to show up to school did not get them to school.

Does wearing a black robe and sort of this judicial process really mean anything if I don't sort of carry through with my work?

You know, I'm a parent, right?

I told you three times to do that or I'm going to fill in the blank.

Byers spoke publicly about this, saying truancy alone was no reason to bring students before a judge, especially in light of what some kids were going through at home.

Just telling a kid that's homeless to go to school where they haven't eaten or been had anywhere to sleep the night before is unrealistic and unkind.

It's cruel to punish children for the things that are happening in their life that are outside of their control.

The alternative was truancy court diversion.

Beyer made visits to Music Middle School, where she met then student Lavelle White.

I just sometimes I just wasn't one to be engaged in school to because of my life and my and it was child, you know, heart.

White would find his way.

Today he's a community coordinator for Metro Parks.

Getting folks of all ages out in nature.

Before that, in his late teens, he became a documentarian.

Thanks, cambium for sometimes the way your family conditions the way he was raised.

White featured the historically black communities he grew up in, like the neighborhood around Music Middle School.

And there was some days I didn't barely make it to school.

And I live right next door to school.

He had his reasons.

Whether it be my mother and my brother arguing in a fight and me and my brother fighting our lack of resources of carrying clean clothing or food, or me being not comfortable and wanting, going to school, going to school because I was getting picked on.

White and countless others over the course of nearly a decade, made their way through one of the nation's first truancy court diversion programs.

The motto was whatever it takes.

Judge Byer will wear her judge's robe.

She had her gavel.

And we all just got together and said, we can do this and make it happen.

Court was in session every Thursday.

So those kids would stay and then the parents would come.

The parents couldn't get there because they didn't have the transportation.

They would go pick them up to school and then take them back home.

They had the serious moments were a you miss these days.

You've been tardy this amount of time.

What can we do to help you to get to school?

And then they kind of give incentive based.

Sometimes they will have, like, dinners for families and lunches.

Positive reinforcement, affirmative responses and clapping and encouragement.

And we encourage the students to encourage each other.

It's a little.

Sounds a little bit hokey, but it worked.

Stefon Gilkey lived by the whatever it takes motto.

Of a parent can go and get little Johnnie Glasses.

So, okay, give me the medical car.

We'll go down there, we get the.

Glasses, and if he knew where a student.

Lived, Mr.

Gilkey will have to come and get me out of bed.

We had, like, a five minute rule.

Brush your teeth.

Wash your face.

Let's go.

But the program could not solve everything.

Some kids, did end up in foster care to be honest with you.

As part in as part of the court process in this.

Why did it wind up in court?

But his mom did.

And by the time white was done with eighth grade, he still wasn't going that often.

No.

I was not.

But the adults that ran truancy court weren't going anywhere.

Saying that we had him, Zeke.

You're never too old to come back to see us.

Gilkey stayed in touch and opened his home to white, who was a frequent guest at Christmas.

Just one of the family members and everybody treated him like that, you know.

And everybody gave him gifts.

You know, everybody just loved Laval.

He would go to college, and Gilkey took him to campus.

He was the de facto Mr.

White because my mother or my father couldn't go.

Yeah.

Sit through that all with him to make sure his financial aid was right, to make sure that everything was right where he was going to stay.

Sometimes when you build a real relationship, it usually never changes.

It turned out that the whatever it takes motto also meant as long as it takes.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm June Leffler.