Teen missed too many days of class — and was taken out in handcuffs, Oklahoma mom says

An Oklahoma mom says her 14-year-old son was handcuffed and taken from school on Wednesday for missing too many classes.

Now, the woman — who wanted to be identified only by her first name, Stephanie — is speaking out.

“I could visibly see marks on his wrists,” she told KOKI. “They shouldn’t have handcuffed him in front of everybody.”

Stephanie told NewsOn6 that her son, who attends Alice Robertson Junior High in Muskogee, had 18 absences this school year. That’s why school officials decided to handcuff him on Wednesday and escort him to Muskogee’s Child Intervention Center, she says.

Officials with Muskogee Public Schools said a warning is issued to any student who misses four classes within a four-week span, according to Fox23. A parent must sign a citation if a fifth absence happens, officials told the TV station. If it isn’t signed, then the school can have a student escorted to the CIC to make the parent sign it when picking up their child.

Stephanie said she never signed that citation, Fox23 reported.

But the mother said she’s not sure why her son was handcuffed in front of his peers if she had to sign the paper.

“It’s my fault. Exactly,” she told KOKI. “It’s not my 14-year-old son’s fault. He doesn’t have a car to get himself there.”

Putting a student in handcuffs is a “last resort,” Dan Hall, chief truancy officer with Muskogee Public Schools, told MuskogeeNow.

“We start off trying to tell the parents there is a problem if a student misses four times during a four-week period,” he told the newspaper. “If the parents don’t respond, we try to call, and if they still don’t respond, we try to do a home visit or try to catch them at their jobs.

“If the parents say they’re going to show up to sign a citation and then they don’t show up, we give them another chance to do that,” he continued, “and if they still don’t show after they’ve said they would, we take the student to CIC so the parent has to come get them and then sign the citation.”

Of the teen’s 18 absences this year, many were excused by a doctor, his mother told Fox23.

For Steve Braun, spokesman for the school system, the policy is all about ensuring a student is present and ready to learn.

“We want our students to be in school,” Braun told NewsOn6. “They can’t learn if they’re not there.”

Still, Stephanie said she isn’t happy with how the school handled the situation.

“Them arresting him, putting handcuffs on him, and leaving marks on him and traumatizing him, in my perspective, is unacceptable,” she told KOKI.

But Braun pushed back against describing the incident as an “arrest,” instead arguing the handcuffs were for protecting the student.