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Shanna Flowers is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.

Shanna Flowers

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Roanoke is desperate to reduce the number of high school dropouts.

But hijacking kids' drivers' licenses isn't the way to do it.

In a city where barely more than half of the high school students graduate, state Del. William Fralin's bill to deny driving privileges for dropouts is undoubtedly well-intentioned.

It also has the whiff of window-dressing.

It's easy to float a headline-grabbing idea that would punish youth who seem headed nowhere. It's more difficult to delve into the reasons behind them dropping out -- and try to remedy those issues.

Young people leave school for a number of reasons, and most of the reasons manifest themselves early in the students' educational career.

By the time the teens reach high school, the threat of losing their license won't stop some of them from dropping out.

Granted, something needs to be done to bolster Roanoke's low graduation rate. Right now, 52 percent of students leave school with a diploma. That means the rest of them fall through the cracks, headed down the slippery slope toward an unproductive life.

But Fralin's proposal, which tightens the compulsory school attendance law to get a driver's license, could end up with unintended consequences.

The bill, endorsed by the Roanoke School Board, includes an exception for teens under 18 working full time.

But for dropouts without a job, trying to find work without a driver's license would hamstring them even more, particularly in a city with limited public transportation.

Another problem with Fralin's bill is that it puts the courts in the unnecessary position of playing mom and dad. There are plenty of valid instances requiring a judge to take on that role.

Deciding whether Junior should drive is not one.

Court dockets are full, court employees overworked, and in tight budget times such as this, tax dollars should not be wasted on punishing at-risk youth because their educational priorities are out of whack.

School board Chairman David Carson called the proposal the "stick" in the division's carrot-and-stick effort, to reward students who value education and to get the attention of those who don't.

Fralin and the school board should be commended for trying to do something to chip away at the dilemma of too many kids turning away from school.

But these young people's indifference toward education begins long before they get to high school and get a driver's license.

At that point, yanking the keys away from them only compounds the problem.

Fralin should "stick" this proposal in a drawer.

Shanna Flowers' column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.