Restorative Justice and Truancy Prevention Program

The purpose of Restorative Justice Truancy Alternatives is to reduce the number of truants and intervene in the truancy issue at six school districts at all levels, K-12. The six school districts are Rice Lake, Cameron, Barron, Cumberland, Chetek and Turtle Lake. Truancy continues to be a major educational concern facing schools, juvenile courts, and society. The major goals of the program are to continue a consistent referral plan to identify truant behavior and establish the minimum number of absences before a student is referred to BCRJP (Barron County Restorative Justice Programs, Inc); continue and expand consistent, written guidelines on program procedures, including the letters to parents; provide training for key school personnel/administrators to discuss the program goals and procedures and answer questions about referrals throughout the year; build on a coordinated response that includes services to address the underlying causes of truancy; effectively use media coverage of the program to increase the community awareness, its consequences, and efforts to combat it; improve the consistent method for providing feedback and communication to schools about the status of their referrals to BCRJP and the interventions outcome; and continue to develop a collection of data to track cases and monitor program outcomes. Measuring the number of truants and the number of referrals to the program will provide the baseline data for the future referrals to the program. NCA/NCF