The following is an excerpt from the January 30, 2012 article Principal on a mission to get dropouts back in school from the Las Vegas Sun
Even though the pilot program hasn’t expanded past the initial 10 high schools this time around, the School District has redoubled its efforts to reach its “at-risk” students through myriad community partnerships and public service announcements.
The district is training about 2,000 volunteers to mentor students and steer them toward a variety of alternative high schools, credit retrieval and test prep options. Earlier this year, the nonprofit Workforce Connections — which focuses on helping unemployed and underemployed adults find educational and job opportunities — assigned a staffer to Western to help the turnaround school improve its graduation rates.
Daniel Topete is Western’s graduate advocate coordinator assigned through a partnership between the School District, Workforce Connections and the United Way of Southern Nevada. Topete has the difficult task of meeting with each of Western’s at-risk seniors twice a month to make sure they are on track to graduate.
Even though he has been at this job for a little over a month, Topete has already identified numerous challenges facing Western’s at-risk students.
The recession has ravaged their Meadows neighborhood, leaving behind scores of foreclosed and vacant homes. It’s not uncommon to check in on a student, only to find their house plastered with evictions signs, he said. Some students’ families are struggling financially amid the worst recession in over a half-century. Parents are working two, three jobs just to make ends meet, wreaking havoc on family life and forcing some students into the workforce before they can even graduate high school, Topete said.
Other students are single parents, children raising children. These groups of students are often the most difficult to reach, because they often miss class for doctor’s appointments and child rearing, he said.
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