Steven sits in his math class with a pencil in hand, filling his pages with sketches of cars, not numbers.

He doesn’t pay attention. He doesn’t do the homework.

In fact, being in a classroom was a rare occasion for the sophomore, at least until a couple months ago.

“I hate school,” Steven said. “It’s just stupid and I hate going to classes. I hate talking to people I don’t like. I just don’t care and [the teachers] gave up on me.”

Steven is just one of the many students struggling with truancy at LHS. Truancy occurs when students fail to attend school regularly.

“There’s a large population of kids who do go to class everyday and make good choices, but I think there’s a good 15 to 20 percent of kids who are struggling to attend regularly, if not higher,” LHS social worker David Raney said.

Raney monitors students attendance and sends out warning letters when students like Steven meet the criteria for truancy. The Budget isn’t using Steven’s full name because of his age and the possibility that he might make different decisions in the future. He didn’t request anonymity.

In Kansas, truancy results from unexcused absences of three consecutive days, five days in a semester, or seven days in a year, whichever occurs first.

Each district decides what constitutes a day of absence, and USD 497 has defined one class hour missed as a day missed.

“You don’t have to be skipping all day in order to have truancy filed,” said Amy Hill, a truancy case manager at The Shelter, Inc.

Most students end up truant by skipping their first hour in the morning or lunch hour. Some, including Steven, just don’t show up to school at all.

“When I lived with my mom, I stayed home all day,” Steven said. “My buddies would come over, play video games and hang out.”

Truancy occurs in all grades, for different reasons.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a low-income problem. I wouldn’t say it’s a race issue,” Raney said. “I think a lot of people who get into high school have life situations that have caused poor choices. Sometimes their parents don’t see the value of education so why should their kids see value in education?”

Some students skip class to do drugs or catch up on sleep. Some don’t have a choice but to miss school — they have to work, babysit their siblings or take care of an ill family member.

Whatever the reason may be, the number of truancy cases at LHS have increased. In the 2010-2011 school year, there were 211 warning letters sent out and 152 in the 2011-2012 school year. Just first semester this year, there were 166 truancy warnings. Not all truancy warnings are filed for formal truancy. That occurs only when attendance does not improve after the warning letters.

The rise in numbers could be the result of the more aggressive approach LHS is taking regarding truancy. Raney is trying to be more thorough about catching students with attendance issues earlier.

“Kids who have never seen consequences from missing school in junior high get to high school and continue the same behaviors,” Raney said. “Catching kids early is important, to try to solve attendance issue as early as possible, because habits are hard to break.”

In fact, most students like Steven who are truant in high school have a past history of attendance issues. Even though Steven has been formally truant since last August, his habit had a long time to develop and stick, beginning early in elementary school.

“I lived three blocks away from the school,” Steven said. “I’d watch my dad drop me off [at school] and go to work, and I’d go home.”

Trying to get truant students to commit to school can be frustrating work, said Barbara Williams, whose directed studies classes often include truant students.

“They come for a while and you think you got them here and on the right track, and all of the sudden something happens that triggers something, and they are gone for a while again,” Williams said. “We don’t always know what that is, so I think the most frustrating thing is breaking the pattern and helping students realize they do need to come to school, even when things get rough.”

Getting into that pattern can develop into a dangerous habit. Raney hopes to prevent the habit from forming in the first place.

“One of my goals is to increase our prevention efforts,” Raney said. “We tend to be more reactive than proactive, and my hope is to actually get a committee together within the district and try to figure out how we can be proactive, to get the message out that school attendance is important.”

Some truancy programs are helping. Sophomore Stevie Adrian said she ran into trouble as a freshman when she began skipping her fifth hour physical education class to enjoy an extra-long lunch break. Soon, she was skipping much more of the day.

This year, her mom arranged for her to be on truancy, matching her with an intern through the University of Kansas Truancy Prevention and Diversion Program. Adrian said she had already determined to straighten out, but she bonded with her intern.

“She’s really helped me a lot,” Adrian said. “She’s there for me and she’s older, so she’s a role model. And because she goes to KU, she can help me find out all the paths I need to go to college.”

If school attendance does not improve, there can be severe consequences for students younger than 16 who are legally required to attend school. In the worst case scenario, students can be put in a group home, an environment in which students’ attendance can be closely controlled.

Not all students drop out at the threat of being removed from the home. The threat of court itself does encourage some students to try to turn things around, including Steven.

“Right now I come to school because I don’t want to go to a boys home,” Steven said.

Such harsh penalties can push students to drop out, said assistant principal Mark Preut.

“We’ve had some kids that got to that point, and their parents just elected to sign their kids out and make the court stuff go away,” Preut said. “The problem is then you put the student in a situation where the facts are pretty grim.”

High school dropouts earn $200,000 less than high school graduates, almost $1 million less than college graduates over the course of their lifetime, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education. Also, the unemployment rate for high school dropouts is almost twice compared to that of high school graduates. Even life expectancy for high dropouts is 10 years less than that of a college graduate.

“You constrain yourself to low paying jobs, lack of access to health insurance, just daily struggle to put a roof over your head, put food on your table, just meet daily necessities of life,” Preut said. “I try to tell parents it’s a huge decision. It might make it easier right now but really they’re setting their student up for quite likely a whole life of struggling to get by.”

Steven’s academic problems are far from resolved. While Steven has made an effort to attend class, he said he hasn’t participated. He plans to drop out.

“At some point when the kids don’t see the point in passing or doing the work, a sad reality is that sometimes kids just give up, especially if they dig themselves a far enough hole,” Raney said.

Often, these students leave talking about earning a GED, but it rarely happens, Preut said.

Adrian sees a much brighter future. She’ll go to college. Be independent.

“[I realized] that if i don’t straighten up, then I’m not going to graduate from high school, and if I don’t graduate from high school then what’s left?” she asked. “Nothing.”