They didn't care what the law was, and she was about to go to jail because they were breaking it. She was also legally prohibited from locking them out of her house. She had gone to parenting classes and family and individual counseling and jumped over every hurdle the system placed in front of her and had no success. Things did, eventually, work out. The kids, on their own, straightened up sufficiently.
Many solutions leap to mind.
Throw truants out of school. Fine, except they then tend to become criminals or other social liabilities. Send them to reform school. There, very expensively, they become highly trained failures of the social engineering mythos. St. Petersburg Times.