In the first two months of the school year, the Los Angeles School Police Department (LASP) and Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) have ticketed 183 Cleveland High School students for being truant.

Truancy tickets are tickets given to students who are in violation of the Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) 45.04 which states that students who are found outside of school from bell to bell without a valid excuse will receive a citation. Generally, students must pay $250 to pay off the ticket in addition to court fees.

Recently, LAUSD board member Tamar Galatzan proposed a motion to expand the truancy tickets to ticket students who are outside of their classes after the bell has rung. This would entail the ticketing of students who are not only outside of school, but who are not in their classes on campus too.

To combat this motion, Community Rights Campaign activists are working to suspend the truancy tickets. On September 28, they petitioned downtown in front of the LAUSD School Board and received more than 300 signatures and 500 phone calls with negative responses to the motion. As a result, Galatzan's motion was completely withdrawn.

The members of the campaign are also working towards decriminalizing truancy and to stop ticketing students who are late or truant. According to youth organizer Alejandra Lemus, tickets also makes for a hostile environment.

"We want to create a more safe, healthy supportive learning environment," Lemus said.

Tickets also put a financial strain on the families, especially eighty percent of students in the LAUSD who are Title I, meaning their families have low income and a financial disadvantage.

"A two hundred fifty dollar ticket only further burdens the family who already have financial stresses," Lemus said.

In addition, the campaign is aimed towards fighting for a zero tolerance policy against unfairly targeting students of color.

"Racial profiling is a great part of it, and it wholly effects who they pick on," Sophomore and Taking Action member Khushboo Gulati said. Taking Action is a club that meets on campus every Friday to protest against truancy tickets and raise awareness regarding the issue.

Instead of tickets, they plan to provide students with alternatives, including offering that if a student is truant, he or she can talk to counselors and psychologists.

"We are looking for proactive measures," Lemus said. "We are looking at the roots to what causes truancy and tardies."

Many students have reported that police officers have ticketed when they simply are on their way to school.

"I was a few minutes late and on the same block as school, and the police pulled us over and ticketed us," an anonymous Cavalier said.

On the Cleveland campus, there are three campus police officers and one psychologist. The LASP and LAPD are responsible for ticketing students at Cleveland High School.

Campus Officer René Avalos who advocates for truancy tickets explained that while most people obviously do not like getting tickets, he believes that, "they [truancy tickets] are a step in the right direction. They are opening peoples' eyes to the consequences of being truant."

Avalos also believes that ticketing students who are truant will teach students a lesson to not be truant again. "If the fine was light, people wouldn't take it[being truant] seriously," Avalos said.

When asked his opinion on Taking Action and the Campaign againt truancy tickets, Officer Avalos said, "I think any organization working to open peoples' eyes is respectable. I can appreciate any organization that helps the youth be aware of what is going on around them."

In response to students complaints about getting tickets on their way to school, Avalos explained that he specifically tickets students who are intentionally not on their way to school. Using his discression, Avalos does not ticket students who are on the way to school.

"Truancy [tickets] are for people who are not making the effort to get to school," Avalos said.

However, Avalos does believe that truancy tickets are an affective solution to solving tardiness.

If a student were to recieve a truancy ticket, he or she must go to court and the truancy will also go on the student's driving record.

*Correction to article: the number of calls made on September 28th was roughly 200 rather than the 500 stated above and the location was actually at Manuel Arts High School (not at the LAUSD Board Headquarters).