Board of Directors

Every day, hundreds of thousands of children are truant, absent from school without an excuse. The vast majority of these thousands of children fall through the cracks of our education and justice systems. They fall behind in their educations, may eventually drop out of school and ultimately become involved in the juvenile, then criminal justice system.

Consider the consequences:

• Absences from public schools cost state and local governments and their taxpayers billions annually in federal education dollars.
• Over 90% of the inmate population in our nation's correctional facilities were truant or dropped out of school.
• An under-educated labor force costs American businesses billions of dollars annually in decreased productivity and increased training costs.

Founded in 2003, the National Truancy Prevention Association (NTPA) works closely with the Bush Administration, the Department of Education, Safe and Drug Free Schools Program and the Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to establish policies and recommend procedures to combat truancy nationwide.

The National Truancy Prevention Association is a not-for-profit corporation (IRC Sec. 501(c) (3)). The Board of Directors is comprised of professionals from around our nation who work everyday with school-aged children. They are representatives of our neighborhoods, our schools, our courts, our businesses and our public safety and social structures.

The NTPA is dedicated to assisting communities in developing, supporting and sustaining effective truancy prevention practices. The Association promotes, educates, trains and provides leadership to our nation's communities through partnerships that help improve school attendance and fight truancy, advocate improving the lives of children as well as strengthening families.

The NTPA commends all those who work tirelessly to ensure that all children are afforded the opportunity for an education. The NTPA hopes to realize its goals of preventing truancy in the future, assisting with the continued development of national standards for "dropout" prevention programs across the country.