In an effort to boost attendance and academic achievement, the Philadelphia School District plans to hire about 250 parents to help find truant students in their communities.

The parents will be hired and trained by a dozen community and faith-based organizations, which the district plans to appoint early in November. The parents will earn $8 to $10 an hour and work 20 to 30 hours a week.

The new force of truant officers will begin work Dec. 2.

District chief executive Paul Vallas provided these details yesterday as he laid out his plan to crack down on truancy in the 200,000-student district.

Last school year, about 12,500 students - about 6 percent - were absent without excuse on a daily basis.

Vallas said the overall daily absentee rate of about 13 percent, which includes both excused and unexcused absences, was too high and hindered the district's ability to improve student achievement. Attendance should be at least 93 percent, he said.

"Schools have not been as aggressive as they should be about improving attendance," he said. "If kids aren't in school, they can't be educated."

Calling them "foot soldiers," Vallas said the parent truant officers know their communities best and will be able to find families in need and connect them with service agencies.

The program will cost about $1.2 million for the remainder of this year and about $2.5 million in each subsequent year as he raises the number of parent truant officers to 500.

Also under the plan, automatic phone calls with a taped message will be made to the homes of students who miss a day of school. The phone-call system, which started last month, is operational at 114 of the district's 264 schools, with the rest of the district to be phased in by January.

Vallas also plans to require truants to attend after-school programs that began this month. If students fail to comply, they will be required to take summer-school classes, regardless of whether they pass their courses, he said.

In addition, a school's attendance policy and absentee rate will be strongly considered when it is evaluated for overall performance and leadership, he said. To help schools succeed, about 1,700 school support assistants, who typically help teachers with a variety of duties, will be asked to focus on truancy. Those assistants also will be trained.

High schools, where poor attendance is most acute, will be heavily targeted in the new program, Vallas said. Overall, high school attendance fell below 85 percent for the month of September. While some schools were above 90 percent, others reported rates below 75 percent, including West Philadelphia High School, Lincoln High School in the Northeast and South Philadelphia High School, district data showed.

Training for parent truancy officers will focus on how to identify students who may be at risk of becoming truant, make home visits, and link families with needed services. It will be provided by the city's Department of Human Services and the Philadelphia Anti-Drug/Anti-Violence Network.

In Chicago, where Vallas headed the public schools for six years, he employed about 600 parents in his truancy-crackdown program, he said. Vallas had said the truancy rate dropped from 5.7 percent to 3.9 percent after the program was established. The overall absentee rate is 8.5 percent.

Philadelphia for years employed truant officers, but they were phased out under former Superintendent David Hornbeck in the mid-1990s for financial and other reasons.

Still, attendance in the district has crept up in recent years as officials used a variety of tactics, including police sweeps through areas popular among truants and the opening of truancy courts in some neighborhoods to expedite cases.

About 20 sweeps are conducted a month, and when truants are picked up, they are returned to their neighborhood school, another age-appropriate school, or one of two truancy centers.

Vallas invited parents and other community members to call the district's 24-hour hot line to report truants. That number is 215-299-7233.