Galesville council repeals truancy ordinance as county fights issue

Five months after it was first considered, Galesville has repealed its ordinance on truancy for K-12 education.

The Galesville city council approved the repeal with a 5-0 vote at its meeting last Thursday with councilor Diane Redsten absent.

The recommendation follows a recent meeting between administrators in the Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau School District, Trempealeau County officials and municipal leaders.

Neither Trempealeau nor Ettrick have a truancy ordinance, so eliminating Galesville’s ordinance allows for a more consistent handling of truancy between the three school district communities.

That should help as the county continues to battle its growing concern over truancy after the COVID pandemic, Trempealeau County District Attorney John Sacia told city officials last Thursday.

Involved parties met earlier this month to discuss the change.

“Just from a streamlining perspective in order to kind of make it consistent among all three communities and frankly, make it a little easier to manage at the county level as well, we all decided that repealing it and just referring all truancies to the county was the best process,” Sacia said.

Currently if a student in the city of Galesville is truant, they can be ticketed through the police department if the county does not act through social services.

With Thursday’s repeal, that responsibility will now stick with the county district attorney’s office instead of the local police department.

“The school district wants to proactively put a better system and process in place. They’ve been frustrated that the county review and then kicking it back to the city to issue a ticket is all very time consuming. And then by the time the ticket gets into the court system, and that unfolds, precious time and educational opportunity is lost,” Kris Wright, prosecutorial attorney for the city, said. 

This is not the first time the council has considered axing its truancy ordinance. 

Councilor Tory-Kale Schulz asked to have the ordinance reviewed in March because he felt the issue was outside of the city’s focus. He called having an ordinance regulating the school issue “silly” in March.

“My concern is that you are a school district that has got a whole bunch of professionals in it with a whole bunch of licensure, continuing education, re-licensure, all that kind of stuff,” he said at the March 9 council meeting.

Schulz questioned last week what has changed since then.

There have been more coordinated discussions on how best to handle truancy between schools, communities and the county since that proposal in March, and it was uncertain how repealing the ordinance then would impact the situation, Sacia told the council last week.

With a better understanding and a more consistent plan as a group, repealing Galesville’s ordinance makes sense now. They didn’t want to repeal it in March without having such discussions first, Sacia said.

Moving forward, the hope is that this will streamline dealing with truancy, which is reaching “crisis” mode, according to the county official.

“This is part of kind of a bigger countywide plan that I’ve kind of been active in since starting last year, kind of frankly starting after COVID,” Sacia said, “to really help the schools address what is a pretty real truancy crisis at every level from elementary through high school.”