Jennifer Chambers and Grant Schwab, Tribune News Service
A bill intended to track Michigan students when they move from one school district to another is expected to be introduced in the state Legislature as soon as next week in the wake of a horrific abuse and neglect case involving three school-age children in Oakland County.
Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said on Tuesday that Oakland County lawmakers from both the House and the Senate are expected to introduce a bill to amend to the school code that would tighten the procedure for enrolling and unenrolling a student who moves from one district to another.
The proposed legislation would require a confirmation of enrollment of a student before the student’s previous school would be able to unenroll them, Bouchard said.
Bouchard, a Republican and former state lawmaker, is pushing for the change in response to a criminal case involving three Pontiac children who did not attend school for several years after their mother allegedly left them alone in their home. The children, a 15-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl and a 12-year-old girl, lived surrounded by trash and feces while their mother lived elsewhere, police said.
The children had been enrolled in the Pontiac school district but left to attend a charter school in Pontiac. Bouchard would not identify the name of the charter school. The charter school had requested transcripts for the children from their former school, but the children never attended the new school and neither school had them enrolled, he said.
“In this case, the previous school received a records request from the new school, but the children never actually enrolled in that school so both schools thought that they were at the other school. This bill would close that gap in the law,” a statement from the Oakland County sheriff’s office said.
The school where they had previously been enrolled dropped them from the rolls, presuming they had moved, Bouchard said.
“We are trying to fill the void that tragically happened here,” Bouchard told The News on Tuesday. “This is an example of why we can’t assume that every child is going to be on someone’s radar.
“We must find a process to ensure that any potential handoff between schools is verified with written confirmation to ensure no children are lost in the future,” Bouchard said.
Reps. Tom Kuhn, R-Troy, and Brenda Carter, D-Pontiac, are expected to introduce a bill to the House while Sen. Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield, is expected to introduce the bill in the Senate. The Oakland County delegation in the House and Senate are expected to join as co-sponsors, Bouchard said.
The mother accused of abandoning her children, Kelli Bryant, was arraigned last week on three counts of first-degree child abuse and faces life in prison if convicted. The Oakland County Prosecutor’s office also indicated it intends to seek to terminate Bryant’s parental rights.
The children were discovered living in deplorable conditions after Bryant allegedly left them sometime in 2020.
Moss and Carter issued a statement last week saying they were disturbed and heartbroken that the children were forced to survive for several years in squalor and abandonment.
On Tuesday, Moss said that he is in talks with the Michigan Department of Education over language to put into the bill to make it an effective accountability tool.
"If this could head off another tragic situation to account for children that might be lost and might be neglected, we have to close that up," Moss said.
Donations sought for 3 kids abandoned, left living in filth-ridden home in Pontiac
The full extent of Michigan's problem with unaccounted-for children is unknown. That's because the state does not keep comprehensive data on homeschooling enrollment and does not release high school dropout data for each grade-level until that cohort reaches graduation age.
Still, even the incomplete data shed some light on the problem.
Michigan had an estimated 82,419 school-age children who were unaccounted for last year, meaning they did not show up on any school roster reported to the state and did not drop out of high school.
That estimate comes from a Detroit News analysis adapted from a methodology Michigan State University researchers used in a 2003 report.
The estimate uses the total number of school-age children in the state for 2023 — 1,581,012 per the Census — and subtracts the number of students who had some documented interaction with Michigan school.
That includes public K-12 enrollment (1,373,686), private school enrollment (115,027), voluntary home school reports (1,045) and high school dropouts among the 2023-2024 graduating class (8,835).
The Pontiac children, who had not attended school in years, were among those unaccounted for.
Bob Wheaton, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Education, called the case of the Pontiac children "tragic and heartbreaking" and said the department believes more needs to be done to close holes in the system and prevent something like this from happening again.
Wheaton said MDE wants to work with legislative partners to provide a system that counts all children.
"When a child stops showing up for school, school officials have the responsibility to reach out to the family to try to get the child back in school. If the child still isn’t going to school, school officials can seek truancy charges. Unfortunately, there’s not much more schools can do after notifying law enforcement and prosecutors," Wheaton said.
Wheaton said for the safety of all students, it is important to enroll students in all categories, including charter schools, private schools, parochial schools or home schools.
"Michigan does not require families to notify local school districts when they intend to homeschool a child, which means Michigan can’t count every child and where that child receives an education," Wheaton said. "Having a record of all children enrolled in these four categories would provide an understanding of the children not currently enrolled in any learning environment."
There is no requirement for homeschooled children to be registered with the state. Local school districts and intermediate school districts are responsible for interpreting and enforcing the state's Compulsory School Attendance Law, which requires children ages 6 to 18 to enroll in school.
Counting every child would help MDE understand how many children are not enrolled in any educational environment and would allow authorities to look into matter, Wheaton said.
"There is a history in Michigan and across the nation of some children not receiving any education at all, in particularly egregious cases in abusive or neglected environments. Knowing where all children are enrolled in an educational setting is an issue of child welfare. Michigan should join the vast majority of states in our country by passing legislation requiring notice to local districts regarding a family’s intent to homeschool a child," Wheaton said.
According to the state Education Department, 1,045 students in Michigan were enrolled as homeschoolers in the 2023-24 school year. But one homeschool advocate says the number is far higher— as many as 50,000 students across the state.