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Police State: 13-Year-Old Pianist Avery Gagliano Labeled Truant after D.C. School System Fails to Recognize Excused Absences

It looks as though Avery Gagliano won't be heading to the classroom this year--that is, if you mean in a communal sense. Instead, she will be doing geography from the kitchen table as the talented piano-playing prodigy is sidelined after a truancy charge from her school.

The 13-year-old will miss out on her first day of school because the D.C. public school system, who recently began cracking down on recurring absentees, asserted that her 10 plus absences were unable to be accounted for and, instead, found it fitting to assign her a truant officer.

Piano travelling, performing to massive numbers of audiences (who are as every bit intrigued by her playing as they are scathing of it), learning through experience the channels of making herself a world-renowned pianist by performing all over the world, are all subjugated by the ever-so small, miniscule, myopic school system, who thinks she's committing a crime instead of creating something bigger.

So for this to make sense, the spectrum of "unexcused" stretches from children who are making poor life decisions in a back alleyway to children who are touring and performing in Hong Kong their latest mastery of Mozart. This is, obviously, on the same plane of truancy.

Instead, the Gagliano family has decided to homeschool their daughter and charge per performance to afford to keep her out of the straight-laced confines of the public school system agenda (which is already in a massive pile of--well, we know).

Well, Avery may not be safe to fly but at least she's no longer a truant. And as her youth slips away one can only hope increasing damage to her public record can be avoided and the system can be overturned--if even just slightly.

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