When Onalaska High School Associate Principal Jared Schaffner came to the school district about a year and a half ago, he was concerned about the high number of truancy citations that students were issued.
"I would say we were being reactive to truancy. When a student reached the number of truancies that could equal a citation, we were calling the student in and giving them a citation," Schaffner said.

Schaffner says that made some students change their behavior, but he felt that more needed to be done early on to help prevent students from skipping.

“As soon as i see a student is at 3-4 truant periods, the parent is getting a phone call, 'FYI, your son or daughter has been truant 3 times and here’s when it’s occurring.'”

Schaffner says he’ll also sit down with those students and work to see why they’re not going to class. And if they’re on their seventh truancy he’ll give them a final warning.

“And for that kid to know then for the next time a friend says let’s go, if they know that if they skip they’re essentially making a $76 decision, that has a huge effect on the psyche of the student,” Schaffner explained.

He says that approach has had a positive impact on the number of students who have truancy issues. In 2009…about 220 truancy citations were issued. That’s down from about 600 the year before. But Schaffner feels the bigger issue isn’t the number of truancy tickets, but the number of students who are cited.

“1% of our students accounted for 46% of our truancy citations. 1% of our students is roughly 11 kids. If we could find something that could work fort those 11 kids, we would cut our truancy level in half.”

Onalaksa Liaison Officer Jasson Jobe says he feels they’ve made a positive impact on those students so far.

"We just have that personal contact with each student on a regular basis and any time we see some of these kids we’re having truancy issues with, we always ask them where are you supposed to be," Jobe said.

A tactic Schaffner hopes will help students early on in their high school career.

Schaffner says they also started a program where some upper classmen will work with the freshmen and sophomores to help them stay on top of their work and keep going to class.