Simi Valley Schools Hope to Cut Dropout Rate : Enrollment: Stung by a high number of cases last year, officials now are optimistic about a plan to track students.

After reporting one of the worst student dropout rates in Ventura County last spring, Simi Valley school officials announced Tuesday that the district now expects to cut dropouts sharply by finding marginal students and keeping them in school.

Spurred by a soaring dropout rate, high school administrators in July began compiling lists of potential dropouts, and identified 316.

Through phone calls and letters to families over the last three months, district officials reduced that list to 136 students--43 fewer dropouts than were reported last school year and the lowest figure in five years if it holds up through June, school officials said.

The Simi Valley Unified School District had the third highest dropout rate in the county last school year, the state reported. State education officials define a dropout as a student who has been absent for 45 consecutive days and has not enrolled in another school.

According to state figures, the number of Simi Valley 10th- through 12th-grade students who left school without a diploma rose from 11%--or 156 students--in 1992-93 to 12.5%--or 179 students--in 1993-94.

Last school year’s figures were better than the state dropout rate of 15.3%, but worse than the county average of 11.7%. The numbers also compared poorly to the 5.2% rate in neighboring Conejo Valley Unified School District.

Reacting to the embarrassing statistics, the Simi Valley school board ordered a program to track troubled students.

“No one had really taken a look at the hard numbers,” said student services Director Dennis Carter, who launched the tracking effort. “There was a lot of work to call and sort that out.”

One of the district’s goals was to determine the accuracy of the state dropout figure and whether some students were being inaccurately counted, Carter said. Indeed, many of the 316 so-called dropouts had enrolled in private schools or community colleges and never notified the district, he said.

“We were able to get back in school maybe 10 (students) that we would not have gotten back in school otherwise,” Carter said.

Before last summer, the district had not acted to curb dropouts, school officials said.

“We never did any kind of tracking before,” board President Carla Kurachi said. “We never identified students that were at risk mainly because a lot of times . . . our counselors are overburdened.”

With fewer counselors available to meet the needs of more students, “sometimes, you have kids who fall through the cracks,” Kurachi said.

The district plans to keep a tight rein on students this school year by compiling lists of potential dropouts no fewer than three times, officials said. The district is also devising a computer system that will contact parents when students fall behind in classes.

Kurachi said the district’s next step is to target students before they drop out.

“We really need to look at who these students are,” she said, “and why they are dropping out.”