Commentary : Dropout Blight Threatens City’s Claim to Be Finest

San Diego, where the sun shines and the palm trees wave in the warm breezes; where the quoted unemployment rate is a record low 4%; where our civic pride boasts of support for the arts, the Super Bowl and world-class yachting. We count these assets in millions of dollars brought into the local economy.

Dropout just doesn’t fit our self-image.

Yet this is the same city where 2,000 students will leave San Diego City Schools this year without a high school diploma. About 26% of those enrolled in grades 9-12 can be expected to drop out before graduation, and, although the rate is highest for Hispanic and black students, the problem affects all groups.

These young people do not have the education and skills to become productive members of the community. Their future is bleak; they can expect to earn only two-thirds as much as their peers who graduate from high school. Nationally, they become 35% of the unemployed and 71% of the prison inmates.

But the tragedy doesn’t stop there. It affects us all. The cost of dropouts to the community is counted in millions of dollars in funds for welfare and drug abuse and criminal justice programs, and more millions in lost tax revenues and contributions to Social Security.

We in San Diego have heard about the problem of undereducated youth. It hurts our nation’s ability to fill jobs, our national productivity and our ability to compete in the global economy. The demographics compound the problem: the population is aging and fewer young people are coming into adulthood. Too many of these youths are undereducated and lack job skills.

But somehow in San Diego, the problems of young people are less visible than they are in many cities. The community’s overall low unemployment rate hides the fact that many young people, especially minority youths, are unable to find jobs. Jobs in shiny new business and industrial “parks” along the Interstate 15 corridor and in North City West are easily filled by outsiders. San Diego is such an attractive area that people will move here and stay here, even to work for “sunshine wages.”

These new high-tech areas are increasingly remote from the county’s areas of greatest poverty and highest dropout rates. Increasingly, Interstate 8 is seen as the dividing line between the “haves” and “have-nots” in San Diego. The affluent move north, leaving the central and south city areas to the poor. Isolation from opportunity leads to hopelessness: What’s the sense of staying in school if there’s no chance to get a decent job?

Other cities have made a start. Nearly two years ago, the National Alliance of Business funded “compacts” in seven cities to help solve the education and employability problems of young people, especially in large urban areas. These compacts, based on a collaborative model developed in Boston in the early 1980s, attempt to combine the resources of the school, business, government and community organizations to meet the needs of disillusioned, disadvantaged youth.

They recognize that the problem of school dropouts is complex, that schools can’t solve it alone, and that employers must play an active role. They also operate on the principle of enlightened self-interest, since businesses need good employees and young people need education and employment. Compact projects set measurable goals for all participants: school systems, the business community and the students themselves.

Compact projects are springing up across the country, each built on the resources and creativity of its community. Boston employers provide priority hiring for graduates of its public school system. Cincinnati will open pilot preschool programs to work with young children who are already at risk of dropping out in later years. In Indianapolis, a compact career development project focused on “at risk” high school students and increased their attendance rate to 90%. And 1,200 Louisville students were given employment-skill training through the compact. Three-fourths of them were placed in jobs.

It may be more difficult in San Diego. The branch-office-town reality is that very few major corporations have home offices here, and home is where major corporate contributions usually stay. The Navy, San Diego’s No. 1 employer, brings much of its work force with it, and civil service regulations limit the availability of many of its civilian jobs. Many of the area’s large employers are defense contractors who traditionally hire very few recent high school graduates, selecting more mature, experienced employees. The preponderance of San Diego’s employers are small businesses: 90% of the member businesses of the Chamber of Commerce have fewer than 100 employees.

Small projects can lead the way. The North Island Naval Air Station will train 10 Morse High School students in aircraft repair skills this year; students who successfully complete the training can gain permanent, well-paid employment at the base, where such jobs were once closed to high school students. Sea World hired eight at-risk students from Clairemont High School last summer, arranging their work hours so they could attend summer school and make up credits needed for high school graduation while earning an income. And the Private Industry Council and San Diego city schools are providing joint funding for a new Youth Services Center serving 60 teens who were on the verge of leaving school.

The San Diego Compact, headed by Chamber of Commerce Chairman Bill Nelson, is being organized to promote and coordinate efforts to help young people in San Diego. Initially, the compact will seek mentors for students at the Youth Services Center, to support them, challenge them and teach them about the world of work. And this week, the compact will co-sponsor a conference, “A Community Preparing for the 21st Century,” to highlight successful approaches to the dropout problem. The compact is also working on an outreach program to involve parents with their children’s education, something that will only show results in the long run.

This is not a quick-fix program. The compact is a long-term commitment, because the problems that cause children to drop out are complex.

Dropout prevention requires strengthened support systems for children: more intensive, personal education; better health services; increased contact with successful, positive adults.

To accomplish this, we must have a communitywide effort. San Diego’s future depends on it, because when students drop out, San Diego loses.