Brevard County mother facing criminal charges because her children missed too much school
A Brevard County mom is accused of allowing two of her children to miss months of school over the past three years.
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Shaunda Green, 37, was in the Brevard County Jail for a failure to appear on a traffic violation last week. That’s where she got served in a months-old truancy case and an unrelated battery case.
According to court records, Green had two students at Endeavour Elementary School in Cocoa who had weeks of absences in the first two months of the 2022-2023 school year. One child had 48 unexcused absences in the 2021-2022 school year and 96 unexcused days in the 2020-2021 school year.
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During a court appearance last week, Green told a judge she was unaware of the charges.
While not commenting specifically on Green’s case, the state attorney’s office told Channel 9 it doesn’t handle many cases like this one. But qualifying cases are referred to the office for a review as to potential criminal violations.
This afternoon, Brevard Public Schools said criminal prosecution is a last resort.
Read: ‘There’s no excuse’: Brevard Public Schools sending parents to court over student absences
“We have a variety of strategies and tactics that we use to try to communicate with our families when a child is having difficulty attending school on a regular basis,” said Russ Bruhn, the chief strategic communications officer for BPS Government & Community Relations.
That would include a non-criminal truancy court. There were 79 referrals last year.
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“Everybody has life situations that that happen,” Bruhn said. “And so, our goal always is to support the students and then support the students’ family as best as we can. And so, we’ll continue to do that in this in every case.”
Green has entered a written plea of not guilty.
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