BETWEEN THE LINES: Schools Keep After Dropouts

— Each year, as public schools open and thousands of children settle into a new year, other young people stay away.

They have their reasons, not all of which have to do with school itself. But a couple of thousand students are no-shows in Northwest Arkansas alone.

More than 2,300 students dropped out or withdrew from school between July 2010 and July 2011 in just Benton and Washington counties.

Since local enrollments make up such a large percentage of students statewide, the dropout fi gure is also a significant share of the state total - about 20 percent.

That means one out of five of the dropouts in all of Arkansas are from one of these two counties.

Why? That is a question school administrators, teachers and volunteers are trying to answer.

Recently, teams of them were on the streets of their respective school districts, reaching out to the students who have dropped out.

They expected to fi nd some had just moved out of the district. The real targets are the ones choosing not to go to school.

The administrators’ and teachers’ common goal was to coax those students back into school, particularly those who may be within a few credits of graduation.

“It is devastating to a child’s future to not graduate from high school,” as Siloam Springs Superintendent Ken Ramey said.

Students who don’t graduate obviously miss out on some of what they might have learned, and they lose the chance to develop skills to make them better able to fi nd work.

They start their adult lives behind their peers with lesser employmentopportunity and lower lifetime earning potential.

Reach Out NWA is intended to get that message to these students and to encourage them to return to school. The program is being facilitated by Northwest Arkansas Council, a long-standing organization of business leaders in the region.

The council has an obvious interest in seeing the region’s work force be educated and has incorporated the program into its education and work force development eft orts.

The council also has the larger goal of increasing the number of college-educated workers in the region. That, too, impacts how Northwest Arkansas will grow, what kinds of development will occur here.

High school graduation comes first, and no child should be lost if something can be done to keep him or her on track toward that goal.

As Principal Karen Steen of Rogers Heritage said, the first goal is to let these students know the administrators and teacherscare about them.

“We know life gets in the way of plans every once and a while,” she said.

Fayetteville Principal Steve Jacoby and his crew of teachers and administrators are in the second year of reaching out to dropouts.

What they’ve learned, he said, is many who drop out have situations outside of school that create the problem.

“It’s not that they don’t want to return to school,” Jacoby said.

“It’s that they just can’t make it work because of fi nancial, personal or family problems.”

Life got in their way.

All of the school districts are trying to help students work around such obstacles, oftering online courses and other programs to get them to a degree.

Going to the students’ homes to explain what is possible - not just to the student but to their parents or guardians as well - must make a dift erence.

BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST.

Opinion, Pages 10 on 09/09/2012

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