“I think nine (phone calls) is pretty good. I've been driving all over the city, going to schools, and I have to tell you, I don't see, I haven't seen any kids on the street, so they're either hiding indoors or they're in school. I'm hoping it's the latter,”
“This is really the school that's designed to help children. We've got the right people in there to do that. We just have to stop what we're doing in terms of suspending them out of there, so I'm confident those students see some positive changes while there,”
“I've apologized for my remark even though it may have been an accurate characterization of a remark I've made. I've apologized for that, and we'll hopefully deal with it at some point in the future,”
“We're going to do what it takes to serve these children, ... We're going to try to make a very chaotic period in their lives as transitional as possible.”
“Truancy is an equal opportunity offense. It's equal exactly with males and females. The demographics are pretty much the demographics of the district, so it hasn't targeted one ethnic group or one gender group,”
“We've worked closely with the Rockford police department to take our calls from the truancy hotline, identify those areas where we are getting those calls, and focus the resources there. That seems to have worked out exceedingly well,”
“In high school certainly you can do a lot of things to increase attendance, but certainly if there's an adverse consequence the kids have set up and taken notice that underage citations are being given out and they're getting back to school,”
“We're looking out here. We're seeing this problem, and I realize that being in Rockford for a while, there's strong feelings about it. But we're going to have to deal with it.”
“I don't think our defense is overlooked or underrated. These guys just to get out there and play. They love to hit and they love to get after the ball.”
