Tom, a district staff presenter, gave a detailed presentation of how the Mosinee School District handles student attendance under Wisconsin law, including a four-tier response intended to identify causes of absenteeism and escalate only after supports have been tried. He cited Wis. Stat. 118.15 and said the district distinguishes unexcused absences from excessive excused absences and uses Skyward coding and robocalls to monitor attendance.

Tom described the tiered system the district uses: level 1 is an initial conversation with an attendance officer or assistant principal; level 2 involves counselors and a student-school-refusal assessment to identify root causes and plan supports; level 3 is a formal notice of habitual truancy when five unexcused absences in a semester are reached; and level 4 requires an attendance correction committee review and may lead to municipal citation or county court referral if improvements do not occur. He told the board: "So level 1 would be a student has, gets their first unexcused absence ... face to face conversation with that attendance officer," and later explained, "Now we can be threatened with a municipal citation." (Tom, staff presenter.)

The presentation highlighted that Marathon County has adopted the state statute and added county procedures — including a diversions program that pairs support and sanctions for families — and that the county runs judges' dockets two days each week for truancy matters. Tom said the county "has a very strong system here" and that neighboring counties sometimes decline to pursue court action. He also noted challenges families face under the 10 parent-excused-day limit in state law, saying the requirement to obtain a professional note can be burdensome: "It's really hard to ask them to go to the doctors, pay $300 for a note, when it's a 103 degree fever." (Tom.)

Board members asked about notification for split households, bus-route impacts of calendar decisions and whether an additional school resource officer (SRO) would change outcomes. Tom described local discretion in deciding whether to issue municipal citations and emphasized the district's mix of supports (counseling, schedule changes, referrals) and incentives (United Way attendance incentives) aimed at keeping students in school. The presentation concluded with district attendance figures that Tom said align with DPI's published rates and with verbal reports that Mosinee's attendance has improved through the tiered approach.

Next steps noted in the presentation included continuing family engagement, using attendance data to inform interventions and monitoring county-level processes if cases advance to municipal or county court.