Community Leaders Uniting in Plan to Stem San Diego School Dropouts

At 13, Christina Doty dropped out of Standley Junior High School, leaving home for a life of sleeping on beaches, in foster homes and in a youth shelter--anywhere but at home with a mother who she says hassled her constantly.

“I wanted to go to school. I’ve always been a good student. I skipped seventh grade--that must say something,” Christina said. “I didn’t want to quit school, but I had to.”

In November, Jim DeLory was unceremoniously ejected from Hoover High School’s 10th grade for skipping too many classes.

“I guess I was just too lazy to go,” he said. “I don’t know how to say it. I guess I just didn’t want to go for some reason.” A moment later, the truth surfaced: “I guess I thought I wouldn’t do good in my classes.”

As hard as she tried, Tracy Valentine could not get along with the other students--and some of the teachers--at Mission Bay High School. In ninth grade, she “blew it,” skipping so many classes that she lost half a dozen credits. Faced with making up the classes or graduating far behind her friends, Tracy considered simply giving up.

“I just didn’t want to go,” she said. “I didn’t like the classes, especially P.E. I hated P.E.”

There are almost as many reasons for dropping out of school as there are dropouts themselves. Miserable home lives. Boredom. Low achievement. Excessive absenteeism. Teen-age pregnancy. The lure of the street. Financial need.

School districts respond with program after program, most of them aimed at students who are just about ready to bail out of school.

But now the San Diego Unified School District, spurred by a 16.5% dropout rate among all its students and a higher quitting rate among minority youths, is beginning a major campaign to head off youths most likely to quit and reclaim many of those who have already dropped out.

The schools will ask others in the community to help keep the city’s teens off the street and in their classrooms. Arguing that school dropouts become problems for the entire community, the school system will convene a 34-member “dropout prevention round table” Wednesday that includes business people, community leaders, a police officer, clerics, teachers and students, along with school district policy-makers.

Its goals, as outlined by school district officials, are ambitious: to cut the dropout rate in half, reduce the number of potential dropouts in early grades by 75%, and recover 25% of the 5,000 city schools dropouts living in the area at any one time--all within three years.

“For a long time, it’s been known that school programs work better if you have community support,” said John Rodriguez, a U.S. Department of Education administrator on loan to the city schools this year. “This being a very important endeavor, it was decided that community involvement was critical.”

“We really are acknowledging that, as educators, we can’t meet all of the problems of education without the help of the community,” said district Supt. Thomas Payzant.

The San Diego effort will add to a growing number of links between schools and the community, ties forged as the nation has refocused its attention on education and the resources available to schools.

In recent weeks, San Diego school officials have appeared in churches on “Education Sunday,” asking parents to pledge greater involvement in their children’s education, and have participated in a 25,000-person community rally against drugs.

“There’s a lot more general interest in public education,” Payzant said. “There’s a lot more willingness to help and respond, because people are convinced that we’re not doing it just to be going through the motions.”

Researchers in the field of dropout prevention agree with the approach. “My own view is that it’s not just a school problem,” said Russell Rumberger, a senior research associate at Stanford University who studied the reasons students give for dropping out. “As long as it’s perceived as a school problem and addressed as a school problem, it’s bound to fail.”

The round table is modeled on a task force established by the Austin, Texas, school district that included representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, the Parent-Teacher Assn. and social organizations, Rodriguez said.

Scoreboards Used in Austin

At the task force’s suggestion, the Austin school system set up “scoreboards” to track the dropout rate at each school, said John Ellis, school superintendent in Austin. It also developed alternative schools where students sign “contracts” to fulfill educational requirements within a certain time, a system currently being used in San Diego. The task force also forged new links between schools and social agencies that work with dropouts.

Whether the San Diego round table can have an impact on the school’s dropout rate remains to be seen, but school officials hope that outsiders can suggest new approaches or ways to restructure the district’s numerous existing programs on handling dropouts.

The task force will also attempt to identify “potential dropouts” and suggest ways of keeping them in school by intervening early in their school careers. As always, the availability of money for the programs the task force suggests will be crucial. The San Diego Board of Education will have the final say on which programs are implemented.

Black and Mexican-American school advisory committees, which have been clamoring for action on dropouts, now will take up the challenge to do something about the problem, said Vahac Mardirosian, chairman of Payzant’s Mexican-American Advisory Committee and a member of the round table. Also on the panel are representatives of black and Asian advisory groups.

According to a 1982-83 study--the latest available--16.5% of the city’s students quit between ninth grade and graduation without enrolling in another educational program. (The rate, low by comparison with other major cities, will rise when the school system submits new statistics next fall, because state education leaders have imposed a different method of calculating the number of dropouts.)

Minorities Have Higher Rate

But the district’s 22,905 Hispanics have a 25.2% dropout rate, and the 18,052 blacks drop out at an 18.7% rate. The district’s 51,998 whites have a 14.1% dropout rate.

A 1983 study by the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the U.S. Department of Education, shows that, nationwide, three times as many poor students quit school as do richer students. The district’s blacks and Hispanics tend to come from lower socioeconomic groups.

But even among middle-class students, Hispanics have a much higher dropout rate than whites and blacks--who quit at about equal rates--making the problem more critical for Hispanics than any other group.

Failure to stem the Hispanic dropout rate will ultimately affect every ethnic group in the city, Mardirosian believes. Without education and skills, the county’s growing number of Hispanics will become a drain on society, instead of contributing to it.

“We need the young people, and we need them with enough schooling that they will serve a societal function,” he said. “It’s self-interest on the part of the Anglo to teach the Chicano.

“We’re going to pound on the schools until they see it’s in their best interest to teach our kids, all kids.”

Just as every dropout has a personal reason for quitting, each one who wants to return to school finds his own way back.

With nothing to do after his expulsion, Jim DeLory became interested in electronics while puttering around with a friend. When a recruiter called from the city schools’ new Educational Clinic--a program that allows dropouts 75 days in special classes to brush up basic skills before enrolling in high school or a vocational program--DeLory decided he was ready to return.

His goal is electronics school. “Hopefully, this will start me on my way to get there,” he said.

Tracy Valentine never did quit school. Instead, she transferred to the Twain Independent Learning Center, a city alternative school, where she is now a junior. “I thought about (quitting), but I never did, because I knew my parents would kill me,” she said. “They would think I was just the worst kid in the world.”

Christina Doty, now a 16-year-old sophomore at Twain, made her move when she found herself “sitting around on my butt watching TV all day.”

“It gets boring. I had no direction. I had no goals. I had no job. I had nothing but sitting around,” she said.

“What I want out of life is a career. I don’t want to be flipping burgers. I don’t want to do that. I think (my future is in) business, and you can’t do that if you don’t go to college. And you can’t go to college if you don’t go to high school.”