A Big PLUS For Society

Last year, more than 500 students at Westminster High School left school, ending their formal educations before they graduated. That earned the school the dubious honor of having one of the highest dropout rates in the area. It is virtually impossible to calculate the cost to the community and the school caused by the loss of these students.

Other educators who are more resigned to such shocking statistics might have thrown up their hands. But newly appointed Westminster High Principal Bonnie Maspero asked the Huntington Beach Union High School District board for assistance, and this year won $50,000 for a pilot program aimed at helping at least some of these students graduate. She also embarked on a project to clean up the campus and make it a more cheerful place.

Called PLUS--Positive Learning Units for Students--the program identified 50 freshmen, mostly minorities, who were “at risk” of dropping out of school based on their eighth-grade attendance records, grades and other factors. Students involved in PLUS get special counseling and are in slightly smaller classes. Perhaps most important, parents are required to help their children with homework one hour a night, four nights a week, as well as attend at least three conferences with teachers during the school year.

Westminster is hoping to keep at least 25 of these potential dropouts in school until graduation. That may seem like a tall order but it’s modest if one thinks of the sad consequences of sending young people out into the world without even the basic skills to earn a living. If the program works, it might serve as a model for other schools faced with similar disheartening dropout problems. And that would be a definite PLUS.