An angry Joe holds a parent/teacher meeting, because 30% of the students are terminal truants. Unfortunately, most of the parents take after their kids. Matthew assumes he's lost Roz when he sees her skipping school. With Harry's case not going well, Sara offers up the services of her attorney ex-boyfriend, Jeffrey, whom Harry can't stand. Sara gets stuck with an incompetent, irascible, middle-aged student helper, Margo Bleiweiss, whose idea of teaching is to throw things at the class. A social services guy, O'Connor, fills Joe in on how one of the truants only shows up on days when he has to have a welfare form signed. Matthew tracks Roz down at her new job as a diner waitress to persuade her to come back, but Roz says her mother needs the extra cash. A student is killed after getting hit by a car during school hours, prompting Joe to look for a way to force the parents to get their spawn to stop playing hooky. O'Connor's comment gives Joe an idea -- stop signing all the truants' welf

Mary Caitlin witnesses a drug deal in the girls' bathroom and pushes Joe to punish the buyer -- unaware that the drugs were for the girls' parents, Henry the stutterer flies off the handle when a scholarship he thought he had turns out to be a fraud, Sara tries to mooch a quarter of a million dollars off her father to make good on the scholarship for Henry and others, Joe takes in Jack after his wife leaves him, and Roz looks to find a date for the spring dance.

Benjamin Harrison is under attack over a science teacher inflicting his religious beliefs into the theory of evolution, Mary Caitlin asks Matthew to see other people after he brings up the subject of children, Jack has a nervous breakdown in the wake of his wife leaving him, Sara panicks now that her father has cut her off, and a juvenile delinquent harrasses other students who don't believe in his God.