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Youth Empowerment director reports truancy caseload and seeks steady support; emphasizes prevention and school coordination
Summary
Candy Archuleta, director of youth empowerment, described recent truancy caseloads, graduation rates from the program and plans to emphasize prevention, dress code and school coordination; she asked commissioners to maintain funding and signaled interest in reviving team court as a diversion option.
Candy Archuleta, director of Youth Empowerment, told commissioners the truancy program has been active since she took leadership in January and described case volumes, graduation numbers and operational priorities.
Why it matters: truancy work focuses on school attendance, early interventions and court‑directed corrections to improve student outcomes and reduce future juvenile justice involvement. County funding supports staff who perform home visits, coordinate with schools and run the court‑based compliance program.
Caseload and operations: Archuleta said 49 truancy declarations came to her office since January, with 26 active cases at the time of presentation and 16 program graduations. She reported informal (non‑court) monitoring of runaways and individualized support for families, and emphasized that the program has no waiting list for initial assessments.
Prevention and school coordination: staff encouraged more proactive school prevention work, which Archuleta said had lagged this year due to staffing turnover in the schools. She said she plans to reemphasize prevention visits, strengthen partnerships with school staff and to cross‑train employees to handle both informal follow‑up and court work. Archuleta also raised programmatic priorities such as dress code and court preparedness to increase the effectiveness of the court appearance process.
Diversion and team court: Archuleta told commissioners she is considering bringing back a team court diversion model that relies on school and community partners to create restorative or community‑service‑based alternatives to fines or convictions; she said that would require school and superintendent buy‑in and potentially additional staff capacity.
What comes next: Archuleta will continue building prevention work with school partners ahead of the next school year; commissioners will consider her program budget as part of county appropriations.
