SARASOTA COUNTY — The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office has launched a special effort to reduce truancy and keep track of students who have missed an excessive amount of school.

The Sheriff’s Office created an initiative called Operation Bueller at the start of the 2012-2013 school year. Operation Bueller — named for the 1986 Matthew Broderick film about a high school student and his friends skipping school — is a phased response plan using an intelligence-led approach that is designed to offer long-term solutions to the local truancy problem.