An honor student from Texas, Diane Tran, had to spend the night in jail last week after she missed a handful of classes. Tran is a junior at Willis High School, who helps her family support two siblings by holding a full-time and a part-time job. Tran has said that sometimes she is simply too tired to attend classes.
“She goes from job to job from school,” Devin Hill, a classmate of Tran, said. “She stays up until 7:00 in the morning doing her homework.”
Tran takes college level algebra, AP Spanish and dual credit English and history courses. Tran’s parents are divorced and do not live anywhere near her. Tran lives with family members that own a wedding venue where she works on the weekends. Texas law states that any student who accumulates ten or more unexcused absences over a span of six months, the school district has the ability to send the case to juvenile court.
“In such cases, resolution of the issue is entirely in the hands of the court,” says a statement on the Willis Independent School District website. Tran was arrested while in court Wednesday of last week after she was warned by a judge back in April about missing too much school at one time. When Tran was arrested, she was forced to sit in jail for one night. Tran was also fined $100.
Close to $28,000 has been raised by the Louisiana Children’s Education Alliance, which created the website HelpDianeTran.com. The money has been raised in cooperation with Anedot and Gatorworks. As of Monday afternoon, there were 26,000 signatures on a petition started by Change.org. The website is asking for the judge to revoke the fine levied on the teen and her sentencing.
