Cheree Peoples’ story provides a poignant look at the impact of Kamala Harris’ truancy policies on vulnerable families. Peoples’ story provides a poignant look at the impact of Kamala Harris’ truancy policies on vulnerable families. As a single mother and caregiver to her daughter Shayla, who suffers from sickle cell anemia, Cheree faced an unimaginable ordeal when Harris’ crackdown on truancy led to her arrest – despite Shayla’s severe illness and medical history.
Shayla, born in 2002, was diagnosed with sickle cell anemia shortly after birth. The disease affects multiple organs and causes chronic pain, often requiring hospital visits, blood transfusions every three weeks, and strong medications like morphine to manage her symptoms. “It’s a very sharp, stabbing pain,” Shayla explains. “It hurts a whole lot, from my chest all the way down.”
For years, the school was aware of Shayla’s condition. Her absences, though frequent, were excused. “I spent most of my time at the hospital with her,” Cheree recalls. “Taking care of her became my full-time job.” Cheree, who worked as a certified nursing assistant and caregiver, did her best to balance work and caregiving, knowing that Shayla’s medical needs were always the priority.
But Kamala Harris’ rise to California Attorney General in 2011 brought a policy shift that Cheree never saw coming. Harris made it a mission to tackle school truancy, citing it as a financial drain on public schools, which lost $1.4 billion annually due to students missing classes. “I first heard of her when she became Attorney General and started talking about prosecuting parents for truancy. I thought, ‘How could she not understand that this would disproportionately affect people like me?'”
In 2012, Cheree, like many other parents, she received a letter from Harris’ office warning that parents could face jail time if their children missed more than 10% of school days. Though Cheree had worked closely with the school, providing medical records and maintaining a 504 plan – a formal agreement between the school and parents to accommodate students with disabilities – none of that protected her from what came next.

Black Mother Devastated by Kamala Harris’ Policies
On the morning of April 18, 2013, Cheree’s life took a sharp turn. “I had just fed my daughter, given her her medications, and sent her off to school. Then, all of a sudden, there’s banging on my door. I opened it, and two officers were standing there. They said I was under arrest for my child missing school. I was shocked. I told them, ‘But my baby is sick. The school knows that.’ They told me to talk to Kamala Harris.”
The officers handcuffed Cheree in front of her home, a moment captured by local media. “It was like a perp walk,” she says, “except I didn’t commit any crime. The TV news was there, the newspapers were there. It was humiliating.” The arrest led to charges of failure to supervise and encourage school attendance, as well as contributing to the delinquency of a minor – charges that painted Cheree as a neglectful parent, even though she was doing everything in her power to care for Shayla.
Two Years In Court
Shayla, speaking of the arrest, shared her disbelief: “My mom did nothing wrong. I was always in the hospital, and we were always bringing in doctor’s notes and calling the school. They knew I was sick.”
Cheree spent the next two years fighting the charges in court, all while trying to care for her daughter, who was frequently in and out of the hospital. The stress took a toll on their lives. “I lost my job, and we couldn’t pay rent. We got evicted and had to move into a motel. I was barely holding it together.” During Shayla’s hospitalization, she suffered a stroke.
Kamala Harris Truancy Policy Tore Family Apart
By 2015, after a long and grueling legal battle, the charges were finally dropped. But by then, Cheree had already lost so much. “The case was dismissed, but we had nothing. Kamala Harris’ policies tore my life apart.”
Destructive, Unconstitutional Actions
The Supreme Court of California later ruled in 2018 that truancy could not be punished with incarceration, declaring it unconstitutional. Reflecting on the experience, Cheree believes Harris was disconnected from the struggles of families like hers. “I wondered how someone like Kamala Harris, who says she fights for Black lives, could do this to me, a single Black mother with a sick child. I think she wanted to make an example out of me. And it wasn’t just me – there were other Black mothers who were arrested too.”
Cheree references the case of another single mother, Tonya Daniels, who was arrested on the same day. “They were using us to scare other parents, especially Black mothers. It was like a warning: ‘This can happen to you.'”
For Shayla, now in her early twenties, the trauma of those years remains. “I still struggle with full paralysis in my right arm and partial paralysis in my leg,” she says. “It’s hard knowing that my mom went through all of that because of me, even though I know it wasn’t her fault.”

Kamala Harris owes an apology
Cheree says that despite the pain, she hopes her story will serve as a warning about the dangers of such punitive policies. “Kamala Harris owes me and my daughter an apology. What she did was wrong, and if she can do this to me, she can do it to anyone.”
Kamala Harris, when asked during her 2019 presidential campaign about the truancy program, denied having jailed any parents. “No parent went to jail,” she said, though Cheree and others like her know a different truth. “She can deny it all she wants, but I was there. I lived it,” Cheree says.
Cheree’s story is a stark reminder of how poorly-considered policies can have devastating consequences when they fail to account for the realities of life for vulnerable families.
Guardian Story
In 2020, Nathan Robinson wrote “Kamala Harris laughed about jailing parents over truancy. But it’s not funny,” in the Guardian newspaper. He said “What’s striking about Harris’ talk is that she doesn’t seem at all aware of the socioeconomic implications of her policy.”
Robinson noted that in 2014, a back mother in Pennsylvania died in jail where she was serving time for failing to pay fines due to her children’s truancy.
Prosecutors as Politicians
One of the worst political choices people can make is to confuse prosecutors with politicians. The Kamala Harris truancy policy and its prosecution of poor black mothers is an outstanding case study.
Here is how Robinson began his story:
“For progressives, there are good reasons to be suspicious of the idea that former prosecutors make good politicians. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and its criminal punishment system disproportionately punishes poor people and people of color. Prosecutors have a leading role in sustaining this injustice, in part because they tend to view prisons as solutions to social problems.”