Court Opinion

ID: 9583214
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:36:00.503769+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:38:53.082261
License: Public Domain

HARRIS, Justice
(dissenting).
An appellate court can react to a poorly drafted statute in either of two ways. It can seize upon the awkward language, give it an impractical interpretation and blame the resulting devastation on the legislature. Or it can seek out the legislative intent in a reasonable and practical manner. There is ample precedent for either course. But, especially when the stakes are highest, we should read the words in an effort to further, and not to trip up, the clear legislative purpose.
There is nothing unclear about the legislative purpose here and it is impossible to overstate its importance. The purpose is to compel school attendance for all Iowa children. Iowans have long attached supreme importance to the development of the minds of our children. Through the legislative process we reached a societal judgment that a basic education is every child’s birthright and that this right takes precedence over the conflicting wishes of the child or the child’s parents.
Without challenging this goal the majority concludes it must be destroyed because the statute stumbles over its own language. I have no idea how many children will be denied minimum educational requirements by this conclusion, but for them the tragedy is incalculable.
A courtroom is no fit place to set minimal educational standards; our society has assigned experts to that task. Johnson v. Charles City Community School Bd. of Educ., 368 N.W.2d 74, 80 (Iowa), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 1033, 106 S.Ct. 594, 88 L.Ed.2d 574 (1985). Whatever the standards are, it is certain the legislature intended for each child to have advantage of them before facing up to the stern challenges of our highly complex and competitive society. Given a choice, we should not deny children this crucial preparation merely because we (not they or their parents) perceive some explainable flaw in the statutory word scheme.
Under the majority’s gratuitous interpretation of Iowa Code section 299.1 criminal responsibility for parents of a truant will be withheld each year until that whole year’s education has become lost to the child. In other words, because there can be no violation of the statute until less than 120 days remain in the school year, the child necessarily will be unable to attend school the 120 days required to allow him or her to progress to the next grade. He or she will thus remain in that same grade the following school year. But when the next school year begins, the statute will not be violated until, again, less than 120 days remain in the school year, and, again, the child will not move on.
The compulsory attendance law is thus completely gutted. Anything left is meaningless because attendance cannot be required during any current school year. The upshot of this interpretation is grossly impractical. I do not understand the majority to contend otherwise. Rather the majority’s position is that the fault is with the legislature, not with us. With the majority decision, though, we share in the blame.
*246We should apply the standard rule of statutory interpretation:
We must construe [the statute] with the other provisions relating to the same subject and seek to harmonize them if possible. We have a duty to consider the objects sought to be accomplished and attempt a reasonable construction of the provisions that will give effect to their purposes. We must avoid a strained, impractical or absurd construction.
Matter of the Estate of Keegan, 369 N.W.2d 447, 449-50 (Iowa 1985).
Under this standard, we are not bound to subscribe to the interpretation adopted by the majority. A much more rational course is to read the statute in the spirit of its purpose.
The section provides:
A person having control of a child over seven and under sixteen years of age, in proper physical and mental condition to attend school, shall cause the child to attend some public school for at least 120 days in each school year, commencing no sooner than the first day of September, unless the board of school directors establishes a later date, which date shall not be later than the first Monday in December.
The board may, by resolution, require attendance for the entire time when the schools are in session in any school year.
In lieu of such attendance such child may attend upon equivalent instruction by a certified teacher elsewhere.
Iowa Code § 299.1 (1987).
I agree with the observation “[i]t is the recalcitrance of the person in control or charge of a child or children which constitutes the offense.” 79 C.J.S. Schools and School Districts § 463 (1952).
Two questions are involved in the statute’s attendance requirement. When must attendance commence? How much attendance is required?
The first question is addressed by the first sentence of the statute. Children shall attend school commencing on a date set by the school board, no sooner than September 1st (though they may set the date as late as the first Monday of December).
I think children obtaining equivalent instruction are bound by the commencement date set by the school directors. There is no provision that children covered by the statute can look to any other date. The first sentence of the statute purports to apply to all children and authorizes no one but school directors to set time for commencement of classes.
The statute requires regular but not perfect attendance. Under the majority’s interpretation the child could not be made to attend school until there remained less than 120 calendar days prior to the commencement of the next school year. This would require attendance for only the last two or three weeks of a regular school year.
It is preposterous to suggest the legislature intended to call for compulsory school attendance, and in the same provision withheld enforcement until there were less than 120 calendar days left in the school year. The only way the provision can be given practical effect is to interpret it as requiring regular attendance, with the 120 day requirement being the minimum standard. It is analogous to the manner the New Jersey supreme court applies its truancy statute. It is incumbent upon the parent who chooses an alternative to public school to introduce evidence in support of the claim of equivalent instruction. State v. Massa, 95 NJ.Super. 382, 385-88, 231 A.2d 252, 254-55 (1967); State v. Vaughn, 44 N.J. 142, 146-47, 207 A.2d 537, 540 (1965) (“As a matter of good sense, it is both reasonable and necessary that these alternatives be matters of exception or excuse to be raised by the defendant ... ”).
The minimum days of a school year are set at 180. 670 Iowa Admin.Code § 3.3(5). Under Iowa Code section 299.1 a child is required to attend school on a regular basis. Some leeway is accorded for absence but the child must attend school for at least 120 days. When, as here3, it is *247shown that a child is not attending school at all and intends not to in the future, a prima facie case is made that the child will not attend 120 days during the current school year. At such a point it should be defendants’ burden to produce evidence from which the trier of fact could deduce the total absences will not amount to more than sixty days (the difference between the 120 required by section 299.1 and the 180 available under the regulation).
The majority characterizes such an interpretation as an anticipatory violation of the statute. I think not. Truancy in this case is in full bloom. And the interpretation I suggest, whatever its weaknesses, strikes me as greatly more rational, and more in accord with legislative intent, than the majority’s wholesale dismantling of compulsory education.
The majority cites and relies on the principle that, when possible, we avoid answering constitutional questions. This is a good and venerable rule but should not call for the ultimate application the majority accords it. It is wrong to go so far as voiding a statute in order to avoid a constitutional question. I would address the merits of defendants’ constitutional challenge.
REYNOLDSON, C.J., and McGIVERIN, J., join this dissent.

. The children here had been absent a full month when the charges were filed and two and *247one-half months at the time of trial. Defendants insisted at trial the absences were to continue.