MANCHESTER — Sixty troubled students now under state supervision will soon have their cases closed and become the responsibility of the city.

For the past three months, the Manchester School District and Police Department have been scrambling to come up with a plan to keep these students out of the juvenile criminal justice system.

Assistant Superintendent of Schools Karen Burkush has compiled a list existing services — both public and private — to guide students as they re-enter the school system. Police Lt. Scott Legasse has reviewed the issue from a legal standpoint, putting together a list of punishments both children and parents could face if the troubled student fails to show up at school.

The Board of School Committee will hear from these local officials today, as the deadline for taking over these services approaches.

“Some parents have a great fear that if (the students) are released into the community and head home, the parents have a fear they will be harmed,” said Mayor Ted Gatsas during a meeting with school and police officials earlier this week.

“The problem at hand is we don’t have six to eight months to look at this and digest it and talk about it,” he said. “They’re going to be on our doorstep Oct. 1.”

The students being monitored have emotional and behavioral disabilities, have acted out violently against family members, are perpetually running away from home, have substance abuse problems or refuse to attend school. Their behavior at one time was deemed so severe their families or the school district petitioned the court to put them under state supervision in the Child in Need of Services program, known as CHINS.

In some cases these children were sent to group homes for treatment and schooling. Others were assigned “checkers” who went to the students’ homes and classes to monitor them.

But changes in state law and state budget cuts have reduced the scope of the CHINS program to care for only the most severe cases. The chronically truant, the runaways and other less severe cases are no longer funded under the program.

Legasse is looking into what legal action the city can take to get the chronically truant back into school, including taking kids and parents to court. State law requires children receive an education and parents can be cited for educational neglect for not getting their child to class.

Legasse has researched creating a truancy court, similar to the one now being run in Nashua. Manchester’s court would have no funding and may be run on a volunteer basis. It would bring school staff, police, parents and students together before a judge to craft a plan to get a child back into school, and lay out punishment for not following through.

“There are parents out there who are not doing their job,” said Legasse. For parents with older children, the problem is usually convincing a child to go and stay in school. In that case, truancy court could hold parents accountable and give them needed backup.

“Parents do have obligation to get their kids up, be creative and get them to school,” said Legasse. “(But) there are some cases where Junior is 250 pounds and that’s not going to happen.”

For children in elementary school, parents bear the responsibility to get their kids to school. In those cases, Legasse suggested using the educational neglect statute which results in fines and potential drivers license suspension.

On the school side, Burkush said she and school staff are in the process of evaluating the CHINS students soon to be released and coming up with plans to smoothly transition them back into a daily school routine. She has reached out to private programs through the YMCA and Child and Family Services of New Hampshire to provide mentors and out-of-school education.

Burkush is also working to extend the duties of Manchester’s one truant officer to other officials in the schools, city and community to conduct home checks on kids who don’t show up at school.

When the school board meets today, it will also discuss whether to hire someone to coordinate all of these students and the services they will receive. When the issue came before the Coordination Committee last week,

Gatsas suggested the board would need to lift the $25-an-hour limit on part-time staff if it wanted to find a qualified candidate to fill this role.