A bill that would send parents of habitually absent students before a judge was floated in front of Boston City Council yesterday, the first step in what some see as a solution to the plague of high school dropouts.

The proposal filed by City Councilor John Connolly and Council President Maureen Feeney draws on a model used in Waterbury, Conn., public schools, which have seen a dramatic drop in absences since instituting the program in January.

As recently as 2006, Boston’s dropout rate rose sharply to 9.9 percent, coinciding with a rash of youth violence. Several recent reports have tied truancy and dropouts to a criminal lifestyle.

“The links are there and that’s what we are trying to address,” Connolly said. “Over a child’s life you go through truancy, which can begin as early as kindergarten, to dropping out of high school to becoming an offender. … That is the cycle we want to break.”

Facing a probate judge parents would be accountable for their kid’s excessive absences and ordered remedies, including parenting classes, counseling and drug or alcohol treatment.

In “extreme cases,” parents who do not comply with a judge’s orders could be stripped of their guardianship.

Connolly expects criticism from some who find such measures harsh, but insists the issue needs to be addressed.“I’m sure people will have concerns that this is a lock-em-up strategy, but it’s not,” he said. “ If you’re really going to break the cycle you have to meet the family’s needs, not just the kid’s needs.”

Boston Public Schools spokesman Christopher Horan said BPS has looked into solutions to the truancy problem in other communities and is “happy to explore this legislation as one possibility” to fixing it here.