Wednesday, October 7, 2009

City truancy points up ongoing problems with youth aid agency where aid is optional


George Kovarie, director of the Berks County Children and Youth Services agency, changed his mind.

Kovarie said his agency will now accept truancy cases directly from district courts and the Reading School District and will handle cases of truants 16 and older.

A month earlier, Kovarie said his agency would not accept referrals from District Judge Wally Scott if there were fines included because he wasn't running a collection agency for the Reading School District. He also said he would not accept truancy referrals directly from the district. And Kovarie said he would not handle truants 16 or over because it didn't make financial sense.

Scott's Coke-bottle glasses steamed up at the county's first truancy summit in August.

"I don't know how you still have a job," Scott said to Kovarie.

Lest we forget, Kovarie is the guy who denied his agency was supervising 16-month-old Maxwell Fisher, who was raped and murdered by Percy Perez, boyfriend of Maxwell's crack-addicted mother, April R. Fisher.

Kovarie also is the one who said it wasn't his fault that more than 1,100 truancy cases referred to his agency by Wally Scott were put in a box and ignored.


Berks County Commissioner Christian Y. Leinbach said he read about the 1,100 neglected truancy cases and wanted answers.

President Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl summed up the committee's work thus far.

"It's amazing how much more you can do when you bring everyone together in one room," Schmehl said. "People can't say stuff that's not true because somebody's there to call them on it. And people hear straight from the lips of other people what they're willing to do and not do."

Truancy is important. Studies show crime in most cities occurs overnight. In Reading, most crime occurs between noon and 3 p.m. Reading's truancy rate is number two in the state behind Philadelphia.

Temperatures in the room last week had cooled significantly since the August meeting.

I'm still not sure Leinbach will get his answers, but something or somebody changed George Kovarie's mind.

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