Judge Ashcroft Addresses Forney Chamber Members

06-08-2012

Denise Bell
Post Managing Editor

On Thursday the Forney Chamber held its June monthly luncheon and Larry Coker, Forney ISD Director of Communications briefly reported on the school districts summer school plans and was followed to the podium by Guest Speaker, KCO Justice of the Peace for Precinct 2, Judge Patricia B. Ashcroft who detailed Forney’s juvenile court system.

Director Coker stated, “What we mainly want to talk about now that school is out is that we do have different days and hours for our schedules. Our Central Administration Building will be open Monday through Thursday from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and then we will go back to our normal days and hours on August 13th.”

Director Coker said, “We will close the District completely, all campuses and staff for the week of July 4th, and in an effort to conserve energy we are going to close most of our school campuses, all but two. North Forney and Smith Elementary will be open for summer school but all the other campuses will be closed from June 18th through July 27th.”

Explaining, Director Coker stated, “summer school for elementary students starts June 4th and goes through June 28th and summer school for secondary students begins on June 11th and end June 22nd.”

Next to address the meeting was the Kaufman County Justice of the Peace for Precinct 2, Judge Patricia B. Ashcroft, who enlightened the Chamber membership on her courts role in the Justice system.

Judge Ashcroft began by detailing her long career and stated, “I moved here in 1974 when my son’s were two and four years old. I raised them here in this community. They both live here in this community and I have grand-children here as well. I’m a former teacher for seventeen years, off and on, while raising my kids. And also I was in law enforcement for fifteen years and part of that was investigating child abuse cases, so you can image that I’m pretty dedicated to helping the youth in this community.”

While explaining how the J.P. Courts deal with juvenile offenses, Judge Ashcroft said, “We all know that corrections is a part of the court system but it has always been my goal to have people come in compliance with the law because you know as business leaders in our community that our economy has been deeply affected over the last four or five years.”

Explaining Judge Ashcroft stated, “Bringing about reason why young people need community service. If the parents can afford to pay the court cost then they pay them. If not, they have more community service hours. These young people are learning to take responsibility for their actions. For many years nothing was done to young people. If they got a citation and they didn’t come to court, nothing happened to them. But in the state changed that is 1997 so now there are recourses we can take.”